


Sound and Fury

by fractalserpentine, HopeofDawn



Series: Sound and Fury [2]
Category: Transformers, Transformers (Bay Movies), Transformers - All Media Types, Transformers Generation One
Genre: Action/Adventure, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Multi, Other, Symbiotic Relationship, Tentacles
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-03-03
Updated: 2012-03-25
Packaged: 2017-11-01 01:06:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 8
Words: 44,016
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/350294
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fractalserpentine/pseuds/fractalserpentine, https://archiveofourown.org/users/HopeofDawn/pseuds/HopeofDawn
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A mech's life revolves around his function; to do what he was built for, sparked for.  But Soundwave's function has been forgotten by those he once served, and now he and his symbionts must fight for their survival, even as Cybertron breaks apart at the seams ....</p><p>--<br/> <br/><i>//THEY dictate who is the deserving. The Towers receive energon, and repairs and more, while we, the forgotten and the obsolete--we drink their dregs. We starve, all in the name of preserving Cybertron -- when we, WE ARE CYBERTRON!//</i> A low metallic rumble went through the crowd, and the mine-guards began pushing their way forward more quickly--only to find themselves boxed in, more and more mecha only slowly moving out of their way, even under the prod of shocksticks and pointed weapons. And some, the largest--heavily scarred, with topcoats worn away in places, yet still showing the remnants of warbrands--some refused to move at all.</p><p>--</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Set in the distant past, on the cusp of the great Autobot/Decepticon war. Same continuity as Giants of The Earth, found [Here!](http://archiveofourown.org/works/255765/chapters/398329)  
> Cowrite with HopeofDawn.  
> Fanart by the lovely and talented [Ravenmoonart](http://ravenmoonart.livejournal.com) based on the Sound and Fury 'verse, can also be found [ here!](http://picasaweb.google.com/110671163945208963618/SoundAndFuryFanart?authuser=0&authkey=Gv1sRgCJaW-PW6052Seg&feat=directlink)

There was graffiti beside the niches this orn.

Kilometers above, the metal walls of Iacon’s towers were burnished, polished, gleaming in the reflected light of a billion distant stars. Holograms played off those circumvolving spires, a never-ending dance of light and shadow. Here, the same walls were roughened with neglect, in an atmosphere thick with corroding gasses.

The heat folded upon itself, layer after layer, undisturbed by the tidal wash of lighter hydrogen and carbon monoxide that swept the extruded spines of the towers, far above. Light seemed filtered here, the right-of-way markers a fitful glow which cast every mech with a yellow-green tinge.

The Quandary wasn’t the mines, and it wasn’t the Pit -- but sometimes it seemed kin to both.

Longtime residents would probably have argued. There were few of the roaming empties here, those miserable mechs stunted by many vorn of energy starvation. Autophages scurried in places, tiny clicking drones that pincered apart debris and carried pieces into the smelters. Most mechs in the sprawling district had a directive and a directive’s accompanying rations, however meager. A few levels up, refineries supplied more fuel -- for those with the black market credits to pay. Occasional patrol sweeps kept an uneasy kind of peace.

Which made the laser-carved scrawling seem downright out of place, if one thought about it. Already, the graffiti was beginning to vanish -- a pair of drones worried at the cut edges, laying down fine petals of sealant and iron dust, working in their simple way to repair by increments the body of their sleeping god. As soon as an enforcer happened by, he would doubtless obliterate the message and drones -- and a fair portion of the wall -- with a few blasts. The open wound would attract more of the little bots, the gap would seal over, the scars would weather away; in a quarter vorn, not even a trace of gleaming metal would hint at this crime.

But until then, the message remained, silvered and brazen, wrought in glyphs as tall as a mech.

_You live the deception._

Soundwave gave the inscription only a glance; there was nothing in either the glyphs or the way they were written that would give evidence to the author. To stop and stare would invite questions for which he had no answers. But a glance was all he needed to ensure the inscription was filed away, tagged and correlated with all the incidences he had seen, both here and elsewhere. The pattern was unfolding, he saw, spreading outward like fissure-cracks upon Iacon and beyond. And interestingly, was not confined solely to the lower levels, to those mechs like himself: the forgotten and the outcast, those deemed obsolete and scorned for their lack of function. No, these fissures had snaked their way through the highest levels of Cybertronian society. There might not be any graffiti marring the shining walls of the Towers, the buttressed halls of the War Academy in Vos, but the evidence was there, if one knew how to look. Patterns of association, of rivalries and resentments and discontent that spread outward, touching everything.

Soundwave had seen this pattern before. Once again, it seemed, Cybertron would not learn from history, but simply relive it.

Still, while the larger patterns could not be ignored, they were not what concerned him at the moment. Out of necessity, their own survival had to take precedence. He turned down a narrow lane, sidestepping a drone busily piling up its small collection of debris. His footsteps rang heavily over the pitted plating of the walkway as he descended into the multilevelled warren of their sector’s living quarters. Here all the units were stacked one upon another, polygonal-chambered rooms squeezed into an exterior shell to maximize the amount of usable space, with little consideration for aesthetics or amenities. Soundwave paused before the entrance to their assigned unit, fingertips touching the battered plating. Acknowledging his own impotence, his failures; then setting them aside.

Transmitting the code, he stepped inside, ducking his helm to clear the lintel. The hatch irised shut behind him with the grind of metal on metal.

“Brooding again?” Buzzsaw said, greeting him with his usual lack of politesse. Perched on the back of the only full-sized seating in their tiny quarters, the flight-framed symbiont looked up from their shared datascreen.

“Evaluating,” Soundwave replied, leaning down to inspect what his symbiont was reading. “Buzzsaw: discovered new data?” They no longer had the access they once did, nor any way to bargain or bribe their way into more, so only the public databanks were available for their perusal. Very little of it was of any worth. All the complexities and variances of any new discoveries were sieved out by the AIs and information comptrollers, in an effort to make the result more palatable for public consumption--and comprehension--by less-specialized mechs.

Buzzsaw shook his helm, sharp-pointed faceplates pinched tightly together in frustration. “No. Rereading old archives. They’ve edited the historical data on dead-end research avenues into astrophysics and stellar cartography again. *My* data is much more complete.”

The too-thin deckplating trembled with the footsteps of another large mech moving past this unit on the walkway outside, perhaps on the way to his own quarters. The vibrations roused Ratbat from his uneasy recharge, where he clung to the underside of an exposed length of corroded cabling. His optic shutters slitted open, optical calipers whirring faintly as they adjusted to the dim light of the monitor. “Mainframe’s research?”

Buzzsaw craned his neck back. He didn’t have far to look -- the room was little taller than Soundwave. If the big mech spread his panels to their full splay, they would have brushed the ceiling -- and probably both walls as well. Buzzsaw’s thin plating clicked as the leaves slid across one another. “Flame’s. Charge and parity symmetry in quantum chromodynamics.”

“Oh.” Ratbat spread his flight surfaces, the antigrav studs there glowing with a faint charge. He dropped from his perch into a short glide, small claws scrabbling as he landed on Soundwave’s shoulder. _//Early spacebridge theory,//_ he sent, offering the relevant applications of Buzzsaw’s find to his host, _//and the third-era line of semi-stable Hadron disruptors.//_ The force of long habit led him to pull up the overview files, preparing and organizing them for Soundwave’s easy access. He queued up data regarding Flame himself, too. Information was rarely useful unless ready to hand and efficiently presented, in Ratbat’s estimation.

The short talons on the tip of each of his wings hooked neatly under the edges of his carrier’s armoring plates, keeping the little symbiont upright, even when Soundwave moved. Still half in recharge, Ratbat nosed at his host’s upswept helm fins, a silent plea. All of the symbionts had trouble completing an entire defrag cycle outside their carrier -- even when they’d had adequate energon, maintenance, and quiet. For Ratbat, especially now, it was nigh impossible. Even minor disturbances roused him.

Case in point: the present clinking from the wall vent. The opening had no grille, was nothing but a simple cable-choked gap over the upright docking closet -- itself a cheap replacement for a proper recharge berth. Laserbeak’s intricate, smooth-toned curses could just be made out. “Impudent, clap-clawed spawns of an oxidizer spill,” a few inaudible, panted glyphs, and the scrape of something comparatively heavy, “closed the access panel thrice this orn!” Another clank, and Laserbeak’s lashing tail appeared, then his haunches.

Supple as an autophage drone, with wings tucked tight, the lithe flightframe could find hidden ways into or out of almost any structure, could slip between wall panels with ease. But not while dragging a covered canister nearly as big as himself. Buzzsaw’s thoroughly-amused chirp of greeting made his class-brother freeze, twist around to turn his optics on the room. Oh. “It seems you’ve returned a breem early,” Laserbeak pointed out loftily, attempting to subtly jam the canister back into the gap.

Soundwave gave his wayward symbiont a level look. “Laserbeak: will explain activities.” Amusement warred with annoyance; it was obvious that Laserbeak had been up to some surreptitious foraging. Soundwave disliked the inherent risks of such activity; fast and silent Laserbeak might be, but bargaining with mechs more than ten times his size was a dangerous proposition. It also brought up the question of what Laserbeak had found to bargain with; if they were to deal with angry mechs looking to strip the plating from a certain symbiont’s frame, Soundwave wanted to know sooner rather than later.

Still waiting for his answer, Soundwave obligingly unfolded the heavy armor on the front of his chassis. A simple carrier-code triggered the opening of the compartments cradled within his frame, shielded under several layers of armor and inextricably linked with his own systems. Lifting a hand, he stroked two fingers briefly against Ratbat’s much-smaller helm. _//Rest,//_ he sent, surrounding the command with _reassurance/welcome._

This, at least, he could still provide.

Wings and helm drooping, Laserbeak performed an about-face maneuver -- while clinging to the lip of the vent -- that ought not to have been possible for anything with backstruts. Gripping the canister in his talons, he flared steel wings and launched himself to his carrier, surrendering his prize to Soundwave's palm. "I found supplies; Ravage’s plating rasps so much, a mech can get no recharge," Laserbeak said, settling his slight weight down on Soundwave’s unoccupied shoulder. His claws were longer than Ratbat’s, pricking a little where they curled under his carrier’s armor.

 _//An old strategist, Emissary class, at Maccadam’s. Lost Redwhisper’s entire Primon saga, when he was upgraded to monitor the road cameras. We struck a bargain.//_ Laserbeak’s glyphs over the link were colorless, carefully neutral. Security monitoring required the ability to split attention to ten thousand links; a task for which a tactician’s singular, goal-oriented logic was not usually suitable. The processors were different, some of the drive modules were different. A mech’s memories didn’t always survive the partial refitting. Some mechs retained just enough to know what they had lost.

Laserbeak dipped his head in approximation of apology, finding Soundwave’s neck cables and nipping along one, grooming the thick support like he would his own flight surfaces. The place where the cable disappeared under the armor of Soundwave’s collarplate was scuffed almost free of color nanites, abraded by too little maintenance and the corrosive atmosphere. “Besides, Ratbat positively squeaks.”

Already climbing with relief into the haven of his host, Ratbat growled. “I do not!”

“Peace,” Soundwave commanded. Accepting the apology, he let them all feel his approval and pride at Laserbeak’s bargain. “Soundwave: grateful for additional supplies, approves of performance of function. Our services, now required by few--but at least not yet forgotten.” Waiting until Ratbat had finished settling himself in, his frame folding down impossibly small to fit into his recharging dock, Soundwave resealed the armor over his chassis and levered himself down onto the empty seating platform. Ratbat would likely fall swiftly back into recharge, but for the moment he was still awake; Soundwave could still feel his thoughts over the link they all shared, listening, evaluating their discussion in his own particularly precise and ruthlessly efficient way.

“What is it?” Buzzsaw inquired, craning his helm to peer up at the canister in Soundwave’s hand.

Soundwave inspected the canister, which was well-marked with glyphs. “Graphite?” he said, glancing at Laserbeak for confirmation that the contents matched the engraved label. Laserbeak nodded, his apologetic droop turning into a more upright stance as he basked in the glow of Soundwave’s approval.

“Oooh. That will feel nice,” Buzzsaw said happily, stretching his wings out to full extension and fanning the overlapping plates. Laserbeak shot him a narrow look, and Soundwave could feel the hum of a tightly-banded discussion between the two flighted symbionts. A more paranoid mech might have wondered what they were plotting; but Soundwave had been a carrier for too long not to know when to give his symbionts some privacy. Living beak-by-helm as they did, it was often the only kind of solitude any of them could get.

Which brought up another question--the location of his last symbiont. Turning his attention to Ravage, he pinged for a location-ID, sending a query over their link. _//Ravage, status?//_ He wasn’t overly worried; of all his symbionts, Ravage’s frame was the sturdiest, built armored and adaptable so that he could spend long orns in the field, chasing down remote encampments of researchers.

The return reply took a moment to issue. It came on a very narrow band, and was stripped of locating data. _//Online and within functional parameters, Soundwave. En route now. One joor.//_ The link bled a little, impressions of shadow and pressure and heat filtering through, as if Ravage were otherwise distracted. Or concealing something. Perhaps aware of his misstep, the symbiont added, _//Request report upon arrival.//_ In nearly everything, the carrier’s will was ruling law; Ravage had no particular right to determine the time or place of his debriefing, or to conceal anything for that matter. But he could ask.

Enfolded in the utter safety of his carrier, Ratbat was afforded -- permitted -- deeper access to link-level communication than the external symbionts. Fighting the spark-deep, soporific sense of tranquility that always resulted from docking, the solidwing cassette stirred a little at Ravage’s request, uneasy.

The two other flyers exchanged obliviously conspiratorial looks, optics spiraled wide. As fast and whipcord-slender as a turbofox, Buzzsaw struck with just as little warning, darting from his perch to snatch the canister of graphite from Soundwave’s grip. Laserbeak launched himself just as quick. The pair of symbionts landed on the decking in a hissing tangle of flight plates and talons, directly and inconveniently behind their seated carrier. Claws scrabbled over the canister. It took both little mechs working in unison to open it, as their talons lacked fully opposable thumbs, and the container had not been crafted with small mechs in mind. Chirruping sly delight, Buzzsaw dipped his beak carefully into the compressed cake of ultrafine powder, crumbling off a piece.

Soundwave pinged them with a cautionary glyph--if the canister spilled, it was unlikely they would be able to obtain more--but otherwise ignored their antics. Instead, he focused on Ravage, his attention sharpening in belated concern.

 _//Ravage: state reason for delay.//_ His connection was attenuated at this distance, with only the most basic of vital data available to him. Still, he did not sense any injuries or impairment, only an ambiguous sense of distraction edging Ravage’s end of the link. _//Situation, dangerous?//_ Carrier protocols stirred, bumping protective-imperatives higher in processing queues, ready to activate.

Ravage huffed a harsh vent. _//Not anymore,//_ he sent, then paused, a shadow of quiet dismay, a dull kind of confusion, crossing the link. _//It is complicated.//_

 _//I’ll hold him down --//_ Buzzsaw sent over a wide band, his beak full, _//-- you get that rotor.//_ Both flightframes launched themselves back at their carrier. Prickling talons scrabbled at the joints of Soundwave’s helm, and a cruelly-barbed tail wrapped -- carefully -- around his throat. The lightweight mech was at most a negligible fraction of Soundwave’s mass. “Now you are at our mercy, Archivist,” Buzzsaw crowed, transferring the chunk of powdery graphite from beak to one limber set of claws, his right wing flailing over Soundwave’s shoulder as he fought for balance. “Do not think to move. Laserbeak, he is pinned!”

The other agile flightframe had already insinuated himself close, clinging vertically to a heavy segment of the ornate armor that banded Soundwave’s flank. Finding a juncture, Laserbeak snaked his head fearlessly between the plates, to the big hip joint beneath. Chirring in mirth, the symbiont found the stiffest of the massively powerful rotors there and began scrubbing the soft graphite into the working seam. The razored edge of his beak proved useful in pressing the powder into couplings that had gone far too long without proper maintenance.

 _//Understood. Ravage: return within one joor. Report any--//_ Soundwave broke off in surprise at the two flighted symbionts’ sudden ‘attack’. “Buzzsaw: expl-!” His vocalizer stuttered with a surprised squawk as Laserbeak aimed unerringly for the sensitive joints beneath his plating. Embarrassment warred with pleasure as the slick powder began to do its work, easing aches he’d had so long that he’d accepted them as part of his normal functioning. “Laserbeak, Buzzsaw: cease activities,” he said, after a moment to regain his composure. “Supplies, limited, required for symbiont maintenance.” One canister of graphite could conceivably be stretched to cover the smaller symbionts; but not if the majority was wasted on his frame. It was only logical that four should benefit from their supplies instead of just one.

Buzzsaw made a rude squawk of dissent. “This is not part of our usual supplies,” he retorted, tightening his tail-grip. He dipped his head, using beak and talons to slather his chunk of graphite into the gap between shoulder armor and cervical cabling, working it into the roughened surfaces of the flexible struts. The powder that drifted down was a balm over the delicate, finely tuned moving parts. “It is a windfall, and windfalls should be enjoyed. By everyone--even stubborn carriers.” He stroked the underside of Soundwave’s masked jaw with his tailtip in teasing reassurance.

Laserbeak vocalised a hum of agreement, reaching deeper for the secondary motility rotor. The bladed back of his neck bumped against a rank of processor relays, and he froze, moved carefully lower. His carrier’s discomfort registered mainly as a muted twinge through the filter of the symbiont bond, but Laserbeak could risk no damage. Medical allotments were beyond the reach of an obsolete class.

In truth, mechs as angular and plated as Laserbeak or his class-brother ought not to be servicing internal components at all, even to this limited extent. During the war and for a time after, medical drones, sometimes even tower-trained medics, had done this for Soundwave thrice a quarter. A carrier could be enormously valuable. Soundwave certainly had been -- even moreso after the two flightframes had selected him.

That had changed with the securing of the research libraries. The access restrictions.

Laserbeak withdrew carefully, with a quietly sent apology, and went back for another two pieces of compacted graphite. Midair, he traded a large chunk over to Buzzsaw, and then returned to his work. The grit-free, non-conductive powder was so fine, it filtered into even the smallest gaps like a cloud of molecular ball bearings, easing the wear of metal upon metal and encouraging natural repair processes. After attending to the biggest weight-bearing gears, Laserbeak moved on to his carrier’s legs -- the places where cables bunched under lighter armor, the articulated sockets, the heavy capacitors, the scarred places where plate scraped over plate.

Buzzsaw finished dabbing one last drift of graphite into Soundwave’s shoulder, and cast his carrier a narrow glance. The big mech did not seem much inclined to escape. Excellent. A moment’s hesitation, and Buzzsaw unwound his tail. Graphite in beak, he began climbing with prickling talons down to Soundwave’s left elbow -- the one that had begun to click whenever the carrier moved.

Though removing either of the symbionts forcibly would cause damage, Soundwave could still command their obedience, order them to stop. But the two flightframes’ pleasure in surprising their carrier was infectious, and he found himself reluctant to rebuke them for their efforts on his behalf. And truthfully--he had perhaps been more in need of maintenance than he had realized. Soundwave made a mental note to do what he could with additional cleaning and self-repairs, once he had time and privacy. Better to head off what smaller problems he could, before they worsened into damage that required specialized attention they could no longer afford.

His symbionts, at least, were reasonably well-maintained. Carrier protocols included full specifications for the maintenance and repair of symbionts’ specialized systems. Only the most severe damage would be beyond Soundwave’s capacity to repair; though their limited supplies of energon, lubricants and other parts--especially ones small enough that they could be adapted for symbiont frames--were a constant, low-grade worry.

“Laserbeak, Buzzsaw: ensure that enough remains for use by all,” Soundwave ordered, but allowed himself to relax into their ministrations, shifting tensed limbs to allow better access. “Your efforts, appreciated,” he added, moderating his tone. Unlimbering a few secondary manipulator cables, he used them to lift the canister, bringing it forward to allow for easier access.

“Of course. Wouldn’t want to listen to the whining if we didn’t share, after all,” Buzzsaw replied cheekily, taking advantage of Soundwave’s change in position to wind himself more securely around the larger mech’s arm, using his tail and wings for balance as he delicately poked more graphite into the intricate crannies of the offending joint.

 _//...don’t whine, either...//_ Ratbat’s sending was just a whisper over the comm link, a faint stirring of awareness in a thoroughly somnolent frame.

Buzzsaw’s murmur of amusement vibrated through Soundwave’s elbow as the symbiont nibbled at the joint.

At the big carrier’s pede, Laserbeak finished powdering his nub of graphite into Soundwave’s ankle assembly. Clicking in quiet contentment, he step-hopped to the sinuous manipulator cables. Jumping lightly up with casual familiarity, talons careful on the thinly-armored sensory appendages, he perched just long enough to peck another piece of graphite out of the canister. Then he headed for the other ankle.

Buzzsaw worked his way down to Soundwave’s right hand and all the tiny, interlocking servos there. It took him some little while to finish properly. His class-brother soon jumped up and began attending to the remaining limb. Satisfied that almost every part they could reach of their carrier had been afforded at least a cursory coat of the mechanical lubricant, Buzzsaw arranged himself in the big mech’s lap, delicate flight and armor plates flared so that he seemed twice his proper size. “My turn,” he declared, thoroughly pleased with himself and helm craned back, looking up.

“Buzzsaw: claiming precedence over Laserbeak?” Soundwave said, amused. Laserbeak was the source of this unexpected bounty, after all, and was more than due some manner of reward.

Forestalling any potential squabbles, several of his smallest fiberoptic tendrils extended, plucking shards of compacted graphite from the canister and insinuating themselves expertly under Buzzsaw’s flared armor and wings, dusting and caressing the tiny, intricate systems sheltered beneath. And since he was not limited to merely two hands--Soundwave turned his attention to Laserbeak, lifting one arm to allow the flighted symbiont to perch more comfortably. “Extend wings?” he requested, delicately lifting another small pinch of graphite between the fingertips of his unoccupied hand.

Chirring in pleasure at the attention, Laserbeak quickly obliged, spreading out the delicate overlapping plates of the flight surfaces and bending his neck to allow easier access to the complex jointed assemblies at their base. Using his fingertips for the broader gaps, and another set of fine tendrils for the more sensitive areas on both flight-frames, Soundwave found himself enjoying their pleasure almost more than his own. In public, their dignity and his own both demanded a certain distance. Only in the privacy of their quarters could he afford to pay them such attentions, to take the time to stroke vulnerable joins, to inspect small limbs and finely-articulated armor for damage. He found some minor areas of wear here and there, along with some scuffs on the polished ebony surfaces of Laserbeak’s plating. But no obvious damage, he noted with satisfaction.

“Laserbeak, Buzzsaw, experiencing discomfort?” he asked, checking over the fine points of beak and talons, the flexible articulations of their necks.

Laserbeak stepped up onto his carrier’s wrist unperturbed, attending the the back of Soundwave’s jointed, gauntlet-like armor for a few moments, until the slow bliss of having his own articulations serviced overcame the will to move. _//He does ask us that every time, does he not?//_ Laserbeak sent his class-brother over a broad beam, confident he’d be overheard. He surrendered his last fragment of graphite to a cable and stretched his beak wide, luxuriating in the feel of the smallest manipulator cilia stroking over the external hinges of his jaw. The tips of each fiberoptic were small enough to work into his finest wing-rotors, spreading cool graphite dust to the deepest of his tiny internal components.

 _//Yup. Think we must’ve picked a good one,//_ Buzzsaw sighed, melting into the careful touches. Wholly trusting, he splayed out across the big mech’s lap in surrender. The bladed collocations at the end of each manipulator-sheath never so much as brushed him. Aloud, he vocalised, “Absolutely, Soundwave. Terrible discomfort, really. Agony. There’s this one spot...” his vocalizer stuttered. “Ooh. Nevermind.”

Laserbeak vented softly, slumping, completely unresisting as he was handled, inspected in every detail. _//Best one,//_ he corrected lazily. If he moved too much, the edges of his armor could easily pinch and damage the fiberoptic tendrils that clustered at the end of the thicker, plated cables -- they were terribly fragile. But it was, fortunately, not difficult to stay still under such ministrations. It was considerably more challenging not to simply drop into recharge.

Amused and pleased by the symbionts’ response to his ministrations, Soundwave took his time, indulging himself with careful strokes along their sensitive, thin-armored frames. Eventually, a manipulator snaked around the seating, its agile cilia retrieving and replacing the canister lid. After a little longer, when it became evident that both small symbionts were steadfast in their determination to impersonate mechs completely lacking in hydraulics, the cables began nudging them into transformation. Buzzsaw gave in first, rousing just enough to angle himself into the warmth of his docking slot. Laserbeak clung to a shadow of awareness for a little while more, his EM field undisturbed. Soundwave stroked the little flyer until every leaf of armor, every flightplate, lay flat and smooth against the symbiont’s frame.

At last Laserbeak too eased himself through his transformation, and slid into his place. The sensation of each symbiont linking their small systems -- energon, coolant and lubrication, and more -- with Soundwave’s own was sharp, but brief. The carrier’s ranks of filters and galvanic cells warmed as they processed the extra load.

It was quiet for a few breem, save for the whirr of distant activity, the vibrations as mechs moved nearby. The symbionts’ small fields glowed gently, contained within Soundwave’s own. The half-broken strip of overhead lighting sensed little motion and faded, conserving energy.

A short time later, the hatch of the living unit irised open.

Linked as they were, it was impossible for Soundwave not to feel Ravage’s approach; but any other mech would have been hard-pressed to spot the shadow that slipped through the open hatch. Ravage padded noiselessly into the small room, nothing more than a flicker of movement and a sinuous line of silver and black in the darkness, tinged with the scent of ozone and burning metal.

Soundwave inclined his head, subtly relieved by his last symbiont’s safe return. “Ravage, welcome.” He turned one hand, opening taloned fingers in greeting, but allowed the symbiont to approach in his own time. Ravage had his own way of doing things, and Soundwave found that certain courtesies, while never demanded, were nonetheless … appreciated.

Glowing red optics regarded him silently. Then Ravage moved forward. Seating himself near Soundwave, curling a bladed and sensor-laden tailtip neatly about his forefeet, he inclined his head into that waiting hand.

After a few moments, Ravage’s optics nearly shuttered, casting a knife-edged gleam of crimson across the pitted, acid-scarred decking. The bladeframe was warm under hand, hot, like a spark spun too hard and for too long. Metal ashes flaked from Ravage’s long, disturbingly-jointed legs; his chassis clicked as it cooled. Finally, the bladeframe bent his plated head so that his optic ridge pressed just lightly against Soundwave’s fingers, the leaves of armor lifting to expose the broad hardline port at the back of his neck. _//This is not for the others,//_ he said quietly, on a narrow band.

Soundwave’s attention sharpened. It was rare for Ravage to conceal information from the rest of their cohort, and never something he did without good reason. _//Very well,//_ he replied, uncoiling a secondary cable and stretching it outwards, towards Ravage’s vulnerable nape. Reconfiguring the cable for secure data transfer was as easy as thought, blue-white fiberoptic cilia stretching outwards to touch briefly, exploring, verifying the familiar port parameters--and then slipped inside, twining with Ravage’s waiting connections as the cable socketed into place.

There was no disorientation in this act, not anymore. There had been at first, long ago -- back when the high-ranking symbiont had, inexplicably, chosen a carrier so newly sparked he sometimes fumbled the adjustments to his own docking slots. The bladeframe was simply so much lower to the ground than Soundwave, moved many times faster, was far bolder in his explorations. It had taken... some getting used to.

Now, slipping into Ravage’s cortex was as familiar as coming home. The cassette’s higher functions were a thin shell over a chasm of memory, a well of files accumulated over eons, so deep it was possible it had no end at all.

Soundwave waited, a blue-silver blade locked into that darkness, anamnesis spiralling around him like flitting silver dendrites, each one a shard of memory, a crystalline chain of time and space.

The file unfolded up out of that unspeakable depth, twining around where their minds had merged, and the world expanded -- to darting paws and tunnels that bled mercury. The thunder of ongoing mining operations rumbled through every surface. Warped hollows flashed by, some of them containing artifacts last seen by mecha when Cybertron still circumscribed a sun. An impossible chasm gaped ahead. Ravage’s strides lengthened, cables bunching with power -- and they were airborne for a singular instant, the canyon so deeply carved below them that entire rivers of molten metal poured away into an unfathomable nothing.

Then claws struck steel again, and they trotted around a corner. And stopped.

The chamber ahead should have been carefully sealed against the elements. Beyond that force barrier should have stretched the Solnus archaeological site -- a pocket of structures preserved by a chance combination of factors, dating from a time before the Quintessons. Even during the war, teams of academics had worked here, had managed to prioritise enough resources to continue their research.

The scholars were gone, now. An unsparked mining drone had broken through a wall. The remains of the driller still lay half-slagged where molten metal from a disturbed underground stream trickled in. The lava had been flowing for a while; it filled most of the chamber. There was nothing left.

Ravage hadn’t really expected there to be.

Something blundered into Ravage’s leg, and the symbiont flinched back with a vicious growl. But it was only an autophage, trundling along with a clipped bit of metal clutched in its crablike claws. More little drones issued forth from an irregular crack in the hallway. Simple creatures, they knew only to carry worthless things to the nearest slagging pool and then return for more, though they did that with great dedication.

But these ones... did not carry mere debris. One bore a small optic, oddly curved, crafted for the harsh bromine burn of the Rust Sea. Another dragged most of a fin, brilliantly mottled in silver and green. Leaves of plate armor, like chips of green energon, so recently disassembled the color had not yet faded. A swimmer’s fuel pump, surgically severed from its spark chamber. All small parts, too tiny and too specialized for even a minibot.

But not too small for a cassette.

Immersed in the memory, Soundwave had to pause at that realization. Clamping down on the first stirrings of carrier-instinct, he focused instead on analysis, forcing logic to take precedence over emotion as he sorted through the minutae of visual detail that Ravage had carried back to him.

The scraps of armor, the dismembered parts, when taken apart from their context-- _left behind, carried away by scavenger claws like unwanted trash_ \--and pieced back together indicated a single symbiont, aquatic frametype. The unfaded chromophores suggested that offlining had been recent; Soundwave pulled related data from his forensic archives, cross-referencing it to the minute gradations of color in tiny remains, the subtle graying of the edges of the silvery fin. It confirmed his initial hypothesis; a very recent death, likely only a few joors before. Ravage had been lucky to come upon the area when he had. Autophages were nothing if not diligent in their duties. In less than an orn, there would have been little left to find.

Soundwave reviewed the rest of the memory, searching back to Ravage’s initial entrance for other cues that might have been missed, other signs of mechanoid life. But there was nothing there to find; only the spreading molten streams of metal and the drones, disappearing into the dark of a crevice too small for Ravage to enter. The quadrupedal symbiont had done his best, pressing faceplates and tail-tip in turn to the small gap in an attempt to sense what lay beyond, any scrap of sound or scent, the barest flutter of an EM pulse. But the iron had been too thick, the crevice too deep.

 _//Evaluation: symbiont death, mischance or murder?//_ he finally asked. There had been tiny ragged edges to the small dismembered parts, but those could very well have been caused by autophage claws. There was no point in speculating why the cassette-mech had been down in those caves in the first place; symbionts went everywhere, often following trails led by nothing more than their own curiosity. Ravage’s find was proof enough of that.

Another memory rose up to entwine Soundwave’s presence, running in parallel with the first and just as detailed and crisp, though the datestamp marked it megavorn in age. Any mech not built for this would have staggered under the complex weave of input -- for Soundwave, navigating the data torrent was simply second nature.

This time, the scene was a stretch of the Rust Sea, the ocean and the air stained red with bromine, the bitter tang of unstable planetary flux on every corroding breath of wind. A set of tracks in the silty metal filings had captured Ravage’s attention, until a flash of green from the heaving sea made him scramble back in a lightning flow of blades and teeth.

Sharply-curved violet opics, a razor-line of teeth set into a sinuous frame, virulent green plating, strong stout fins for oceanic endurance and limited movement across land -- the mech that drew himself onto the beach was the perfect miniature replica of an oxide shark. He was roughly the same size as Ravage. Interested, curious, the aquatic cassette chirped a symbiont’s greeting.

 _//...Minebreak did not reach that place on his own,//_ Ravage added, momentarily flashing on the image of green scales sinking into cherry-red molten metal. He paused, pressed his optical ridge a little harder against Soundwave’s hand, which even still cupped his head. _// I did not know his present Master. But the waveframe was always... sociable.//_

Soundwave leaned forward, resting his other hand upon Ravage’s bowed neck, expanding his field to accept Ravage’s discontent, the flickering pangs of grief for an old acquaintance lost. It was more than likely that his symbiont still held data--memories--from Minebreak; most symbionts exchanged information whenever they happened to cross paths. Currency and courtesy both, it was an ingrained instinct for a symbiont to share what they knew as widely as they could, to prevent any chance of it being lost forever.

 _//Minebreak’s cohort, unlikely to leave him behind,//_ he said, feeling his way around the edges of the puzzle that Ravage had brought to him. Even if the waveframe had somehow gotten separated, and died alone and in the dark--there was no way his carrier couldn’t know. No way his carrier wouldn’t have attempted a rescue. There was a possibility--very small, and with a very wide margin for error, given the number of suppositions he was being forced to make--that the rest of the dead symbiont’s cohort could still be trapped underground. If they were dead, there was nothing Soundwave could do. But if there was any chance they still lived--

His carrier protocols were pinging insistently, rerouting past datawalls as they rose through priority-command queues. Symbionts had to be preserved, guarded. It was unlikely any of the Iacon enforcers would lift so much as a servo to help, much less organize any kind of rescue. Not for mechs that--as far as they were concerned--belonged to an obsolete, outcast frameclass that should have been reformatted vorns ago.

 _//Ravage, assessment required. Searching area for rest of the cohort possible?//_ he asked, already checking his own archives for all known chronicler-carriers and symbionts in Iacon. The information was embarrassingly outdated; as their class had fallen out of favor, so had any official attempt at tracking carrier mechs and their cohorts, many of which had been forced to roam far afield, searching for ways to retain their usefulness.

The pressure of his carrier’s field felt cool over Ravage’s heated chassis. The bladeframe’s optics shuttered entirely as he relaxed a little more weight against Soundwave’s unyielding frame; the symbiont turned his head to lay his jawplates across Soundwave’s knee assembly. The small shift in position disturbed the connection not at all -- the multitools clustered at the tip of the sheath kept the manipulator cable locked neatly, firmly, in place. The bladeframe summoned up the appropriate series of files -- tunnel images and sensory scans -- relying on his carrier for the complex height and hazard calculations.

 _// I can trace a safe path, though whatever hazard befell them may still remain. A search would go still faster with the flyers. If...//_ and here Ravage paused. A symbiont, he knew, was not well-equipped to even process the many variables of a decision like this, and linked to his carrier, he could not keep his worry from seeping over the bond. _// If there is fuel enough.//_ Not just for the search -- what if they found the carrier? Or other cassettes?

Soundwave considered the problem, running all the permutations and possible outcomes, weighing them against the known hazards of Cybertron’s subterranean levels. None of their cohort were adapted for tunnelling, and Soundwave’s own bulk would be a hindrance in the smaller spaces. But Ravage’s vast knowledge of Cybertron’s layered strata, its tunnels and mines and deep, secret places, combined with the flexibility and speed of his cohort, was enough to tip the results marginally in favor of their survival. The line between success and failure in his calculations, however, was razor-thin. It made him uneasy.

 _//We shall go,//_ he decided. _//Tomorrow, after refueling and recharge.//_ Ravage was correct in his assessment; even if they found the rest of Minebreak’s cohort, it was unlikely his symbionts would have the strength or the energon to attempt a rescue. A carrier, however, could easily bring multiple symbionts to the surface. So Soundwave would go as well, to guard their safety and provide support, and together they would see what there was to find.

Ravage’s affirmation -- and his concurrence -- filtered over the bond. His carrier had made a decision; the bladeframe’s fears were dispelled. Trusting in his cohort, Ravage would find the way.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The term 'cohort', as used for a family-group of mechs, was created by femme4jack and Merfilly in their most excellent [ Patronus](http://archiveofourown.org/series/12331) series. After much consideration, we simply couldn't come up with another term that worked even half as well, so we're also using the term to describe Soundwave+symbionts, with much gratitude!


	2. Chapter 2

\--

 

And the way led them down.

Soundwave’s winged symbionts took the open spaces for their own, making short gliding excursions between the curving walls of towers, dodging with agile skill between hanging wires, rarely still. They spread a broad net, sensors and optics alert, picking out items or mechs or sudden movements of possible interest. If their carrier wished, he could see at will almost any aspect of his surroundings from the air.

Ravage took point, tracing their way -- along wide highways, sloping tunnels, oddly curved ramps. The bladeframe, when alone, often travelled by ventilation shaft or power conduit, places too small and too cramped for most mechs to move. With Soundwave following, he was restricted to mainly the common ways, crowded and noisy or debris-choked and desolate, but all descending.

A joor or two, and the walls of the towers became rougher, corroded with black-cast iron meters thick. The shining towers and pavilions overhead grew still more distant, their brightness just a gleam, subtle as a memory.

Warframes were more common here -- heavy creatures, grounders as tall as Soundwave but several times heavier, or smaller but built to carry mechanotons of weaponry. Black market credits changed hands openly. And the empties were everywhere, pawing through rubble, splayed out in the streets. Many had lost limbs, suffered from rust -- many also wore the faded marks of military service. The heat grew uncomfortable, the decking sometimes damp with mercury. Service drones were rare. If discovered, they did not last long -- were quickly cracked open for the tiny charge of energon they carried.

A few levels above the bottom, the empties began to look upon even Soundwave with... appraisal. It might not be the Pit, but still, the slums of Iacon were not kind places.

The flighted symbionts did their best to keep well out of reach.

The narrow way coiled at last down a vast curve, marking the very base of one of Iacon’s great towers. A black market complex crowded the canyon floor -- itself a plain that stretched as far as the optic could see, in the lingering miasma. Open sky was a narrow strip here, a thin rind of stars made soft by the oppressive thickness of the atmosphere. The crowd was likewise dense, char-streaked mechs going about their business amongst stacked cages of chained turbofoxes, slabs of offworld stone stolen from official freighters, sheet metal and supplies of all kinds, stripped parts and weapons, highgrade siphoned from the rations of the useful, and much, much more. The trading grounds, not coincidentally, crowded the perimeter of a great, open mine, and the mecha who supplied black market goods and services did not even bother to conceal their activities.

On the rim of the metalworks, Ravage paused. The void was crossed by walkways, and sank straight down, save for a crumbling road that clung to the edge. The bladeframe paused to eye the heavy traffic entering and exiting the mine. The narrowed gaze of a distant overseer passed over him, unseeing. The overseer bore a disruptor whip, and wore a scuffed civilian brand. _// I gained access here, before.//_ Ravage offered over the bond, indicating a jagged pile of unworked iron and the narrow black gap beyond. He twisted to glance up, towards where the flightframes glided in silence. _// We will require another entrance.//_

Soundwave inclined his head in acknowledgment. _//Symbionts will spread out, search for possible entrances,//_ he ordered. _//Soundwave: will attempt negotiations for access.//_ He had little expectation of success, given that he had nothing to bargain with and few connections of any usefulness in this place. But at least he could be an obvious distraction, drawing attention and affording his cohort the space they needed for their search.

Quick pings of acknowledgment came back from all four symbionts, who quickly vanished into the murk of the thick sulfuric smog. Soundwave turned, and began to make his way to the main entrance of the mine. The overseer did not have the look of a reasonable mech, but Soundwave had gained quite a bit of unwanted experience in being a petitioner over recent vorns. Making his way through the ebb and flow of the crowded walkways, he watched the patterns of the mechs about him, listening to their conversations, upping the gain on his sensory arrays in order to monitor to the overlapping transmissions around him. One never knew what one might hear; and even the smallest bit of information might prove to be of use.

And there was a great deal to overhear. The mecha in this shadowland did not vocalize much, but the shortwave band was dense with transmissions, mostly poorly encoded. The panels folded at Soundwave’s back, with their intricate networks of sensors, had little trouble sieving meaning from the tangle.

The warframes had been home for many, many vorns, but still they spoke of battle, of weapons and campaigns. Many of them had, at least, something to trade: meager rations, or metals smuggled from the mines. A great number had been sparked in war, and knew only that -- they seemed to have no experience of Iacon at all outside the mines, outside this place. The merchants and civilians complained bitterly about their patrons, about growing scarcity, about the ever more common empties. And everyone grumbled about energy.

The overseer pressed himself back into the wall as a hover-drone convoy, guided by a smaller mech and laden with unprocessed metals, trundled up the rampway. Soundwave’s relative cleanliness set him apart, even more than the odd build of his frame. “You there,” the mech growled, shoving a char-crusted minibot on his way. “What you want here?”

Turning, Soundwave inclined his head with assumed deference, doing his best to seem unthreatening. It was a difficult task; he was almost a third again larger than the overseer, who, while a bulkier frame, was considerably lower to the ground. Soundwave was also in far better repair, devoid of the corroded armor edges and char-streaks that marked all the mecha that lived and worked in this sector.

“Soundwave: requests entrance into the mine,” he said evenly.

The overseer bristled. Yellow-armored under the grime, his alt-mode was a heavy-load hauler, if Soundwave was any judge. “Yeah? What for? Gonna go see the sights? Maybe pick up some scrap to sell while you’re down there? Get outta here--I don’t care what kinda fancyplate bot ya are, no one’s gettin’ inta my mine that isn’t paid ta!”

Predictable. Soundwave surpressed the urge to vent a sigh. At least the overseer’s indignation was attracting a fair amount of attention. Including most of the nearby mine-mechs, who were using their boss’s preoccupation with the interloper to take an unauthorized break and enjoy the show at the same time.

“Pilferage, not intended,” he said, more to extend the argument than out of any hope that an explanation would help. “Rescue intended; possibility exists of mecha trapped in tunnels.”

The overseer was not impressed. “All of my miners are right where they’re supposed’a be,” he snapped. “An’ if anyone _else_ was sneaking down inta MY mine, then they deserve ta get melted inta slag!” He revved his engine as if to punctuate his point.

“Enforcers, share your opinion?” Soundwave asked.

“Those whiteplates? They wouldn’t go down inta my mine even if the Prime himself had his aft stuck down there.” A bit excessively hyperbolic, Soundwave thought. Still, true enough, at least for mecha of little importance. And it was obvious that without outright bribery--which he could not afford--there was no chance of shifting the overseer’s position.

Resigned to his role, Soundwave set himself to continuing the argument. He had been reasonably skilled in debate once, even if his peers had criticized him for being excessively dogmatic. Taunting a single low-level supervisory mech into a properly loud harangue shouldn’t be difficult. Assuming, of course, he could do so without said mech deciding to pound his argument through Soundwave’s helm the old-fashioned way.

The overseer grew both increasingly bellicose and vulgar as he argued, drawing still more attention. Soundwave‘s carrier protocols tracked the progress of his symbionts as they scoured the rim of the mine and the surrounding sloping plain, their task made simpler by the absence of prying optics. And then a proximity warning, not Soundwave’s own, flashed through the big mech’s systems, a bolt of sudden, imperative awareness.

“...yer nodes numb, or did somebot swap yer processor and gearbox? Prettybot, you gotta have chrome bearing lugnuts if you think yer smoggy reactor-linkage is goin’ --” the overseer flicked his optics towards a cluster of miners who were doing anything *but* mining “--inta MY... my -- whut the frag?” the overseer paused. Ran a proximity sweep.

Where the _Pit_ had the big mech gone?

 

\--

 

Along the rim of the mine and the iron tailing slopes surrounding it, the three flyers ranged in wide loops, drawing from their carrier’s experience of search patterns, from Ratbat’s efficiency logarithms. Though there was no interference from the distracted miners, the ground was craggy, buckled and heaped with scree, crossed with crude walk ramps and crowded with merchants, all of which slowed the inspection. Every hollow had to be investigated from several different angles, while avoiding dangling wires and, twice, stray weapons fire. It was a daunting task -- but the symbionts were good at finding things.

Small and nearly invisible in the dimness, Ratbat fluttered to the top of a vast mound of scrap, monitoring the acoustical environment for any sense of secret hollows or tunnels. There were a number of smaller cracks -- Ratbat watched in amusement as several tiny autophages issued forth from one of these, marching towards the leading edge of the scrapheap, evidently determined in their simple way to clean up the entire pile one fragment at a time. A mech, perhaps the owner of the very same dubious treasure, cursed, kicked the little drones away. They wouldn’t last long, with so many empties nearby. Ratbat relayed the locations of a few promising cavities to Ravage, then spread his flight surfaces, preparing to move on.

A trail of steam caught his optic, and Ratbat paused, refocusing. The still was a crude affair, cobbled together out of whatever came to hand. The jagged helm of some offlined mech -- audials and all, though it was missing the faceplates and more valuable pieces, served as one of the reaction chambers. Nevertheless the distillation setup had been cleverly assembled. One agglutination of parts was particularly unusual. Ratbat hesitated, glanced around -- and then launched himself into a glide for a closer look. The would-be still was quite innovative, actually--partially hidden under an acid-eaten overhang, it was a uniquely efficient twist on the usual process. The end result might not please the silvered palates of the Towers, but Ratbat thought the highgrade produced could be quite uniquely … potent. Possibly even explosive. Was that a--?

\--a hand snatched him out of the air, far faster than the little mech could react. “Gotcha, you pathetic little piece of scrap!” Taloned digits dug painfully into one wing as Ratbat squawked in dismay, all dignity forgotten as he flailed, trying to escape from the far larger mech.

Stepping out of the shadows of the overhang, the red-and-black armored mech lifted his catch to show to his companion. “It’s not enough we have to deal with empties and those stupid scuttling drones--now we have to deal with flying glitchmice too? I bet this worthless, thieving glitch is responsible for most of the pilfered energon around here, right, Reverb?”

“I am not!” Ratbat yelped indignantly. “I’ll have you know I--awrk!”

“Shut it, rodent,” the mech ordered, grinning unpleasantly as he shook his captive. “What do you think? He’s worthless for parts--should we stake him out, drain his tank and let the drones pincer off pieces instead?”

“Uh--Stoplock? You do know that’s a cassette-mech, right?” Armored in blue and purple, the red civilian insignia displayed prominently on one shoulder, Reverb didn’t seem to be nearly as enthusiastic about their catch.

“Yeah? So?” Stoplock tightened his grip, listening to the yelping reach an even higher pitch as fragile wing-plating crumpled under his talons. “It’s not like they’re worth anything anyway. Nobody cares about an obsolete scraplet like this.” He gave Ratbat another shake for good measure, the mech crying out in sharp ultrasonic yips of pain.

“Stoplock--cassettes have *carriers*,” Reverb hissed. “I don’t wanna--”

A sonic pulse rocked the elevated roadway, slamming into both mechs with pinpoint precision. The shockwave tore at delicate systems, inertial dampers and gyros reeling under the screech of distorted sound, and nearby bystanders scrambled out of the way, crying out in surprise and dismay as sensitive audials were assaulted. The two mechs caught at the center of the attack, however, never got the chance. Not before two and a half mechanotons of angry mech hit them like a gravtrain.

A primary cable lashed out like a silver whip, wrapping around the arm that held Ratbat captive. Clawed connectors reconfigured themselves into brutal spikes, sinking past the mech’s armor, hacking motor controls. The talons spasmed open; three other secondary cables caught the injured symbiont, cradling him with delicate care.

Pulling Ratbat to safety, Soundwave kicked a teetering Reverb out of the way, a heavy pede crushing the thinner armor where the thorax met pelvic girdle and sending the mech windmilling into the wall. Ignoring the fallen mech, Soundwave turned on Stoplock. More primary cables snaked out, whipping about limbs and spearing vulnerable joints, and a taloned hand punched through the smaller mech’s outer plating, tearing it open. Stoplock flailed, trying to bring weapons to bear; new tentacles intercepted them, pulling them aside, spearing into the supporting systems with a strength that belied their size.

Academic Soundwave might be, but that did not mean he was oblivious to the more practical applications of the data his symbionts held. Data that included the weak points inherent in certain frametypes, for instance.

Soundwave stepped in, his prey held effortlessly aloft. “Choice of victims, most unwise,” he informed a whimpering Stoplock, sensory panels spread in a threatening display of silver and electric blue. A primary cable, still wrapped around the arm that had held Ratbat prisoner, tightened and began to pull. A metallic scream escaped Stoplock as wiring parted in a shower of sparks, energon leaking from ruptured lines. “Advised never to touch a cassette mech again,” Soundwave continued, his words all the more threatening for their lack of inflection. “Query: removal of limbs necessary for memory retention?”

“Ssst--aaargh!” Stoplock’s own scream was audible to him only as a muted sound; his higher-frequency audial was shattered, entirely offline, no longer even transmitting errors. He felt each articulated socket of his right shoulder strained to the point of parting, links just beginning to pop out of place, rotors loosening -- and screamed again. “E-enough! Please, oh stop, stop please!”

Jerking a piece of his own armor out of the wall, Reverb pushed himself back to his feet. And looked up.

And up.

Sweet Primus on a microchip.

He’d seen a carrier just once before, when his colony’s mainframe was being updated. The image still haunted him. One mech alone, between the columns of eight central databanks and impossibly linked to all of them, faceplates tilted back, standing quietly in the midst of a datastorm that made Reverb’s diodes stand on end from twenty paces away. A manipulator cable had disengaged itself from one supercomputer’s port, had swept with profoundly eerie grace for another massive column. He’d seen the glowing cilia and the cluster of attachment spikes and drills on the tip, still crackling with charge, as daedalean and sophisticated as a medic’s multitool hands.

They said a carrier could hack anything he touched with those. _Anyone._ It wasn’t right. Wasn’t anything this side of normal.

Reverb had repressed the shiver up his backstruts and turned to leave -- planning to get his file some other orn -- and froze. A symbiont was watching him. The thing had crept onto the wall above. He’d seen them before, of course; cassettes went anywhere, got into anything. They’d always seemed innocuous. But with its carrier doing _that_ just behind him.... Reverb had left quickly, fighting not to flinch under those small, glittering optics.

Reverb really wished he could leave now as well.

Because this ... this was nothing like that other carrier. Disoriented, audials ringing, Reverb watched the chronicler rear back. The big mech’s panels arched in flashing display, and there were more than just eight of those fragging cables -- too many to count, waving like razor wires in the air -- and some of them spearing up through fragging _bodyarmor_ , like they’d fragging _melted it_ and Primus knew what they were doing to Stoplock. The red and black mech jerked, screaming, the ready-cogs of his weapons pierced through.

Reverb released the locks on his energon shortblade.

A broad, dagger-sharp sensory panel shifted infinitesimally. In the speed and fury of combat, most mechs would have overlooked the tiny energy-spark released by that unlock. It was only the barest flicker of energon, there and gone--but it was all the warning Soundwave needed. A thick manipulator cable yanked free of Stoplock’s struggling frame, snapping backwards to crack across Reverb’s faceplates with the metallic squeal of metal on metal. The force of the blow snapped the smaller mech’s helm sideways, sent him staggering; and then he went down again, this time as the frame of his friend came crashing down on top of him.

Reverb struggled to free himself from Stoplock’s sparking, leaking frame, his fingers closing desperately about the hilt of his shortblade as the carrier mech advanced on them. Then he froze as rumbling snarl vibrated in his audials, a set of bladed teeth snapping microns from his face. “Try your little weapon,” snarled the symbiont, (and how the Pit had the thing gotten so close without him knowing?) slinking into full view, ebony and silver armor gleaming dully in the dim light. The thing moved like it had no backstruts, like it was one great, articulated blade. “Try it, and you will soon find yourself short a limb with which to wield it.”

Soundwave advanced, fully masked and battle-ready, his primary cables weaving a razor-edged pattern in the air. “Yield.” The word was flat, uninflected, and devoid of mercy.

Reverb felt his pumps lock up, frozen in terror. There was nowhere to go; he couldn’t even flinch back, trapped under Stoplock’s twitching frame. “I yield! I yield!” he cried, vocalizer crackling, unable to even twist a hand free to protect his optics. Stoplock’s own limbs spasmed hard in the epileptic aftereffects of a motor control hack -- the jerking and inchoate trembling shed more sparks. Stoplock moaned, a pained and static-laced sound. “He yields too!” the downed Autobot gasped. A crowd was beginning to grow -- albeit at a distance. Big warframes watched avidly, thoroughly entertained, while civilians hastened to put still more space between themselves and the enraged carrier.

Cradled carefully against Soundwave’s side, Ratbat was shielded in back by the flare of a panel and in front by the spread of barbed cables. The symbiont clung tight, shivering and silent, both little sets of claws gripping. One flight surface wrapped itself around the supporting manipulators, the other jerked as he tried to fold it.

The tip of Ravage’s tail twitched, a slow swing, as if unlimbering the heavy, mace-like complexity of cutting edges at the end. His jaws gaped a little wider, multifaceted optics gleaming murder, every gear of him awaiting his Master’s judgement.

A well-bladed cable swooped downward, stopping with razored edges hovering a bare servo’s width from those terrified optics. “Query: describe future actions, should you encounter another cassette mech.” Soundwave’s question was dry, almost uninterested, as if he were nothing more than a AI testing memory retention. Ravage gave another snarl, the subharmonics rattling across Reverb’s plating.

“I--I--won’t touch them. Won’t lay so much as a talon-tip on a cassette ever again, I swear! Stoplock either!” Reverb said frantically, meaning every word. Terror threatened to overload several circuit relays as his lasercore coupling revved uselessly, gears slipping. As far as he was concerned, he would be a happy mech indeed if he never saw another cassette. Also, if he never saw another data manipulator cable. Primus, even though the thing had retracted its blue-white cilia, it could extend them just as fast, and they’d snake through every seam of him, right into his processor cores, maybe into his spark for all he knew, and then, and then -- oh, Primus. Primus. A scream caught in Reverb’s vocalizer at he helplessly watched the whorl of drilling blades at the tip of the tentacle rotate, reconfiguring right in front of his cracked optic.

The manipulator cable dipped, hovered--then slowly, with deadly intent, reached outward to drag one chisel-tipped blade in a slow, deliberate line across the front of Reverb’s chassis. The drawn-out screech of metal on metal made both the cringing mech and the onlookers wince, armor plating clamping tight in reaction.

Then, with a final considering tap, the blade withdrew. “Your answer, acceptable.” Soundwave looked them over, his visored gaze lingering on Stoplock’s battered, still-convulsing frame. Then he turned away. “Ravage: leave them.” Much as he wanted to tear them apart for the damage done to Ratbat, even here the offlining of another mech would draw unwanted attention from the Enforcers. Their primary objective had to take precedence.

The bladeframe symbiont held his position a fraction longer... then, obedient as a drone, turned and stalked after its master. Reverb went limp beneath his companion’s shuddering frame with a gasp, faceplates and chest cover burning.

Around Soundwave, the crowd melted away, mechs turning back to their pursuits with suspicious casualness. At first, it seemed that they were moving away from the carrier -- a reaction with which Soundwave was entirely familiar. But there was something off about the pattern of movement, the swirl of the crowd.... _//We’ve got trouble, boss,//_ Buzzsaw’s warning came with a live image, a view from above. To Soundwave’s right, three warframes -- squat, solid shocktroops, in scuffed black and white -- shoved mechs out of their way as they darted single-file down a shaky metal rampway, headed for the site of the commotion. They’d arrive in a quarter-breem or less.

Soundwave turned left... and another mech stepped deliberately in front of him, just out of cable-reach. The medium-heavy grounder stood casually, weight to the side, just slightly forward. His surface nanites were battered, but they’d once been black and white as well. The enforcer’s warbrand was nearly scuffed out, but the faint indication of bars on either side remained -- old marks of rank. The solid mech’s ease was deceptive. _//His weapons are ready-hot,//_ Laserbeak sent along with thermal scans, as he circled wide for a better shot should Soundwave so order, the slender flightframe invisible in the murk overhead.

“Not bad, chronicler,” said the enforcer, tilting his head a little, all four optics flashing as he took the big mech's measure.  Interesting frameclass.  An obsolete, often all too willing to follow orders.  Let's find out.  “Bring the bird down. We need to have a little chat, you and I.”

Soundwave’s head tilted slightly, and he stopped--but made no other effort to obey the enforcer’s command. Or to put away his manipulator cables, though the more fragile secondaries were pulled subtly backwards, behind the bulk of his frame and the more heavily armored primaries. “Query: nature of this conversation?” he asked evenly. Ravage, picking up on the new threat, was suddenly very still, a narrowed crimson stare watching the interloper’s every motion, ready to move between one instant and the next.

Interesting.  The enforcer arched an elongated optic ridge. Lazily, he ticked each point off on the talons of one hand, wrists subtly turned so that the motion would not foul his aim. His unsettling gaze never left Soundwave, or the bladeframe by his side. “Well now. First, let’s discuss why you saw fit to hack a mech, mark a civilian -- an aft, admittedly, but a civilian nevertheless -- and disrupt this, ah, fine and upstanding business establishment. Second, think we need to talk about this sudden rust-rash of carrier interest in... a likewise fine and upstanding Senate-authorized mine.” The enforcer’s tone was level, his glyphs reasonable, casual, calming. Delaying.

“Only motor relays hacked,” Soundwave pointed out evenly, giving nothing away. “Cortex programming, untouched.” He watched the enforcer, gauging their situation. Two civilian mechs had been easy to overpower, especially with the element of surprise and Ravage’s assistance. But heavily armored as he was, Soundwave was not a warframe; the enforcer had him outgunned, and once the others arrived, outnumbered. To attempt another attack would only end in either damage, incarceration, or a brutal offlining, none of which would benefit himself or his cohort.

No, Soundwave would need to rely upon older, better skills for this. Especially if he wished to learn what the enforcer knew about this mysterious carrier mech.

“Stoplock: attacked symbiont without provocation,” he said, even as he unpacked archives with lightning speed, cross-referencing, picking over IDs, histories, public records. He had the entirety of Cybertron’s many wars at his disposal, archived and studied over vorns. Military history was more than just advances and retreats, great battles won or lost--it was about the mecha that fought them. Lesser historians might focus upon the shining names of Air Commanders and Lord Protectors, of Senators and Primes, study endlessly their decisions and their politics. But a truly talented scholar remembered that any battle could turn, for good or for ill, on the actions of the lowliest newsparked soldier. “Carriers: speak for, protect symbionts. Actions, self-defense under law.“ There. There was the data he needed, tucked among the mustering-out rosters of the Parhelion War. Soundwave inclined his head in a subtle courtesy. “Unit Subcommander Barricade.” It was a gamble--but most military mecha remained proud of their rank, even when those duties had long since been taken from them.

Barricade’s optics narrowed slightly, the only indication of rapid recalculation. Then his faceplates broadened in a faint expression of pleasure, his backstruts straightened a little. His casual stance seemed to fall away, revealing the shadow of a prideful military bearing, though the enforcer hardly moved. “You’ve heard of me, then.” Barricade was wagering that the carrier hadn’t heard too much, didn’t have access to _those_ files. “Still, this isn’t a conversation we should have here. Think there’s a cube at my desk somewhere -- back at the station. Stand down, and we’ll finish this there.” The cadence of his vocalizations was just slightly different, flatter, more millitary. The enforcer’s reaction was exactly -- precisely -- the one Soundwave expected.

Soundwave gave him a nod. “Invitation, accepted.” He opened a private line to his cohort, heavily encrypted in layers only a bonded symbiont could hope to decipher. _//Laserbeak, Buzzsaw: follow from air, maintain safe distance. Ratbat, Ravage: will remain with me.//_ He would have preferred that Ravage also disappear into the safety of the shadows, but to do so now in front of the enforcers would be far too suspicious. _//Ratbat … status? Capable of transformation and docking?//_ He could feel the small mech’s pain as a throbbing echo along his own frame; but he couldn’t afford to take the time for repairs. Not here.

Still shivering, Ratbat exchanged his grip around his carrier’s manipulators to press little claws into the seams of Soundwave’s armor instead, pulling himself determinately up towards the archivist’s shoulder. His crumpled wing hung oddly, not quite folding. He could probably, he thought, angle it enough for transformation. _//Something’s glitched about this one, Soundwave. Let me keep an optic on him.//_

The other three enforcers shoved their way through the crowd, spreading out around the bigger carrier, weapons online and brandished. Two of them kept a wary distance from the data cables, but the other approached, unhooking a pair of stasis cuffs from his tool latch. Barricade’s optics slid to him briefly, and the overeager enforcer stepped back. “This way.” Barricade paused, then nodded towards Soundwave’s fan of silver manipulators. “We’ll attract less attention if you put those away, too. Make my reporting go a whole lot easier.” The directive this time was more delicately respectful, probing, trying one hook at a time.

Soundwave waited just long enough that the new enforcer arrivals began to shift uneasily, secondary optics glancing nervously at their squad commander. Then, slowly, he began retracting his cables, blades and claw-tipped ends folding back into the segmented armor. They coiled back into his frame, and Soundwave lowered his forearm, giving Ratbat a talon-hold to grip as he lifted the injured symbiont to his shoulder, despite his misgivings. Ratbat would be much safer docked inside his carrier. _//Ratbat: allowed to remain, but required to stay alert. Will retreat with Ravage if further violence occurs.//_ The command was laced with imperative modifiers, allowing no room for dissension.

The small mech nodded, and Soundwave turned to Barricade, ignoring the other surrounding enforcers as if they didn’t exist. “Soundwave: understands, Subcommander.” He retracted his battlemask, extending his hand towards the walkway in silent invitation. “Willing to follow, at your leisure.”

Barricade’s secondary optics tracked the carrier’s short delay, his facilitation of the smaller mech’s movements, the little symbiont’s firm and unquestioning nod. Soundwave behaved, moved, spoke, as if his designation were still of central importance -- to himself, if not Cybertron.

The other enforcers relaxed, as if the chronicler were somehow less dangerous with his cables sheathed. Barricade knew better. He fell back to walk slightly beside the carrier, on the other side of the sinuous pace of the bladeframe symbiont. “Much appreciated -- Soundwave,” he said, adding -- as if out of the force of long habit -- a non-specific glyph of respect to the phrase, such as might be applied to a fellow officer. Pride-up was going to be the name of this game. For the time being.

And here, Barricade thought, he’d imagined this shift was going to be _boring._

 

_\--_

_  
_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Barricade, of course, is pulled straight from Antepathy's characterization -- one of the most intense and flat out gorgeous I've ever read for any character *anywhere.* Antepathy's Barricade is just too shiny -- we couldn't keep our hands off him! This doesn't even begin to measure up to her mastery, however, so if you're looking for something to read next....


	3. Chapter 3

The enforcers made no further mention of Soundwave’s other symbionts as they escorted him, though uneasy optics sometimes slid to the skies. The enforcer command center had been blasted into the base of one massive tower, and had perhaps once been a hanger or storage facility of some sort, to judge by the side of the entrances, now mainly sealed over with thick sheetmetal armor. Weapons dealers and rambling, unpowered hovels were common in the surrounding broken alleys. The civilian enforcement sigil was branded boldly into the corroded iron above the garrison, but none of the enforcers seemed to wear it themselves.

Struggling empties and virus dealers were dragged in or out, rarely under their own power, and enforcers cast sidelong glances at Soundwave’s unbound frame. Inside, the lighting was nearly as poor as outside. Metallic shrieks issued from one tall passageway; Barricade led them in the opposite direction. A door hatch irised open on a room so spartan, it likely served as an interrogation chamber -- just two seating platforms, one with attachment links for stasis cuffs, arranged on either side of a metal table which itself was solidly bolted in place. “If you would, Soundwave?” Barricade gestured to one platform, as he laid several cubes on the table. He took a flask from another enforcer, who retreated -- probably to stand just on the other side of the hatch.

“For them as well?” Barricade asked, spilling a measure of clear blue energon -- probably strongarmed from some merchant -- into two of the cubes.

“Negative. Offer appreciated, but unnecessary.” Not strictly the truth--not on the minimal rations they all received--but a polite answer dictated by caution, nonetheless. The energon did not appear contaminated, but Soundwave was too experienced to trust anything given to him by a strange mech. Much less a strange mech who obviously had an agenda of his own. His systems could handle a fair number of contaminants; his symbionts, less so.

Soundwave sat, and surveyed the room in all its battered, stained glory. One way in and out, and walls thick enough that the dents made by angry mecha hadn’t even buckled them at the seams. He wondered if the close confines were intended to be an additional, subtle intimidation all their own, or simply were a side effect of the enforcers’ obvious lack of resources.

Ravage did a brief circuit of the space, noting the tiny hidden lenses that denoted cameras and the inset pickups for audio surveillance. He sent a brief databurst to Soundwave, sharing what he’d found, then silently crouched in his master’s shadow, with only the scarlet gleam of his optics betraying his presence.

Soundwave picked up the cube closest to his seat, giving Barricade a spare nod of thanks. Despite the risk, offered energon was too rare to waste, and refusing would antagonize the enforcer besides. He studied the energon within for a moment--clear-filtered and gleaming blue-white, it appeared to be good quality mid-grade, far better than anything he could afford on a regular basis--then took a cautious sip, letting it slide over the filters at the back of his intake as autonomic processes kicked in, checking for adulterants. While the analyses were running, he watched Barricade.

“Your desk, quite tidy,” he said mildly. If this was an enforcer’s office, he’d paint himself gold and call himself Prime. “Query: conversation, official in nature?”

Barricade’s centermost two optics shuttered momentarily, perhaps a gesture of amusement -- though one very subtly... different from most of his other apparently reflexive movements. “Don’t think there’s any need for that, do you?” Barricade answered, picking up his own cube. His seating platform was a little taller than Soundwave’s -- though not enough to make up for their height differences. The enforcer’s faceplates, originally mass-produced, were not particularly mobile, his expressions difficult to read. “Mechs denting each other up is pretty common down here. So is bureaucratic inefficiency. Turns out, the protest that, ah -- Stoplock? -- filed has already been misplaced.” Barricade tipped his cube up, swallowed. Good faith gesture, check. Something easy now, open-ended, conversational. “It’s less common to find directive-level mechs down here of their own will.”

Interesting. Assuming the enforcer was telling the truth, he’d saved Soundwave a fair amount of inconvenience. Which left the question of what Barricade wanted in return ….

Ratbat shifted minutely, watching the black and white enforcer with narrowed optics. He was well aware of the usual exchange of favors and blackmail that the lower ranks of Iacon’s civilian security divisions used to supplement their increasingly limited allotments of energon and supplies. And yet--somehow, he didn’t think this was just another backroom deal. Whatever Barricade was fishing for, he wanted it badly enough that he hadn’t resorted to the usual strongarm tactics. Instead, he was going out of his way to court Soundwave’s favor. Curious.

“Objective, not to cause trouble,” Soundwave replied. “Mention made of other carrier mech seen in vicinity of this mine. My concern: symbionts and host still missing, possibly requiring rescue.” Truthful enough, and easily corroborated by his very public confrontation with the mine overseer. Whether or not Barricade believed him, of course, was another matter entirely.

“I see.” Barricade tilted his cube, one pair of optics following the thick slosh of energon contemplatively. Strange. The carrier responded as if he had nothing at all to hide. Which, given the subject at hand, was nothing short of bizarre. It had been a very long time since anyone had bothered even trying to play the innocence chit with him; Barricade found it rather refreshing. “And what leads you to believe he is -- they are -- in need of rescue?”

The results of Soundwave’s analysis came back: the energon was clean. Or at the very least, uncontaminated by anything Soundwave was familiar with, and he doubted Barricade had the resources--or the need--to try and poison him with anything more exotic. Taking another, deeper draught from his cube, Soundwave took a moment to savor the taste. It might not be high grade, but it was clean and smooth and charged his systems with a subtle kick he hadn’t felt in … longer than he cared to remember.

“Symbiont remains, found in tunnels,” he finally said baldly, making no effort to hide the truth with polite circumlocutions. “Minebreak’s offlining, recent. Rest of cohort, still unaccounted for.”

The bare statement gave Barricade momentary pause. How could the carrier know what had happened in a place he’d never been? But then, the big mech’s injured symbiont looked agile enough to get itself almost anywhere, as cassettes tended to do. During the war, there’d sometimes be half a dozen scattered around the battlefield, doing Primus knew what. Getting a mech as big as Soundwave into the mine, however, clearly was proving rather more difficult for them. The enforcer weighed his options a moment. Well now. So long as the carrier was being so forthcoming... “What do you suppose they were looking for?” Barricade asked, tone casual, alert for even the smallest of tells. Soundwave, unfortunately, gave him little to work with. Unless ‘stony incomprehension’ was a tell.

“Name of Minebreak’s master, currently unknown,” Soundwave replied. It was surprisingly difficult to admit how little he knew about the missing mecha. In a way, it felt like a personal failure. How could he not be able to find out something as simple as a mech’s name--especially the name of a fellow carrier-mech? He tilted his head, concealing his unease. “Unusual, that a chronicler team entered mine without your knowledge. Symbiont death, also apparently unknown. Query: nature of your interest?”

Ratbat shifted uneasily, a movement so small as to be imperceptible. If the enforcers were responsible for Minebreak’s death--or worse, if *this* enforcer was responsible--Soundwave’s tactic of answering questions with questions might very well backfire. He disliked being trapped in this tiny room, being questioned by an arrogant enforcer. He disliked even more knowing that it was his fault they were here in the first place.

Barricade stilled, a momentary and appraising pause. Interesting spike over baseline there. He tilted his cube in contemplation, touching each edge idly against the metal tabletop -- corner, corner, corner... a faintly abashed, non-threatening sort of fidgeting, easy to read but not too obvious. Barricade’s optics slid away from Soundwave for a few beats, as if the enforcer were decompressing old archives. “Don’t know how much of the Parhelion theatre you remember,” he said, “or the Telorian campaigns. But quite a few of your class served near the front, bringing intel back from impossible places. Saved all our skidplates, more than a few times.” The enforcer glanced briefly to Soundwave’s symbiotes. “Your missing mech is Amplitude. Don’t know how he gained access or what he was looking for. Do know that chroniclers were slagging useful once. Should be again.”

Amplitude. The name was familiar, though the mech hadn’t ever been one of Soundwave’s intimates. He queried his symbionts, pinging them the name. As always, he relied upon their memory more than his own, and once again, his faith proved justified.

 _//Amplitude ...//_ Buzzsaw replied after a momentary pause. _//Investigative researcher. He was known for tracking down data other mecha wanted buried--he loved secrets, the more explosive, the better. Worked under the auspices of upper-level Enforcement sometimes, some data-mining--was even involved in a few military and senatorial investigations. Had a cohort known for getting into trouble and loving every minute of it.//_ He hesitated. _//Minebreak … is an odd fit for a carrier like that.//_

 _//Amplitude’s cohort was small--if he had lost a symbiont, or more than one symbiont, he might have been desperate to find replacements,//_ Ratbat suggested, cold practicality overcoming his reluctance to mention the possibility. A carrier’s status was determined by their symbionts, and no new chronicler mechs, carrier or symbiont, had been created for many vorns. Their class had been dwindling for some time; it was not impossible that desperate need might have forced a symbiont to accept a carrier’s offer, regardless of how ill-matched they might have been.

“Amplitude …” Soundwave paused as if he were unarchiving memory nodes, searching for information. Letting Barricade wait, even though his cohort had already provided the information he’d needed at literally the speed of thought. “Had a reputation. Was widely connected, once. This district, the mine, both odd places for him to be.” A partial truth; from the data-profiles Buzzsaw had compiled for him, Amplitude once had connections that stretched into both the civilian and the military intelligence services … but that network had long since attenuated into nothingness. No one needed chroniclers now. Not for investigations or anything else.

Barricade’s attention sharpened, though his tone stayed neutral. He could hardly fault the other mech for playing games with information. It made this little exchange all the more entertaining. “And why, exactly, is that?”

With the ease of long experience, Soundwave located several old files over the public network -- a spotty affair down here -- and sent the relevant tagging frequencies.

Barricade’s optics widened as he scanned through the cursory public offerings. Oh. _That_ Amplitude. The enforcer had long since dismounted the original files from his quantum storage, keeping only the headings in order to preserve memory space, but a little rapid review recalled just how much of a stir the exposures had caused. During the early days of the war, several civilian and military officials had been caught offering weaponry to an alien faction which, shortly thereafter, proved to be just as aggressive towards Cybertronians as the enemy. The mech who had put the pieces together, infiltrated and uncovered the conspiracy, had received a commendation from the Prime himself. The unfortunate traitors had been subject to the Lord Protector’s very personal, and very untender, mercies.

Barricade tapped his talons on the table, processing. This ... this was fascinating. And useful, if Amplitude still excelled at disruption. If he was the same mech. An enforcer-database search for archived images turned up a few high-res scans, all old, dated near the end of the war. Nothing since then, but they matched closely enough with the mine’s surveillance feed, and the miners’ descriptions.

This could conceivably come back to bite him. To bite _all of them._

Barricade had always found opportunity in chaos. And the timing of all this... well. It just couldn’t be passed up.

Coming to a decision, Barricade pulled a small object from a slot in his armor. He slid the little chip of silica across the table. The outer casing was complex, highly engraved, imprinted with holograms in at least five dimensions. The transmitter inside had a resonant quality to its field, even presently inactive. It gleamed in the dim light like an artifact from another civilization, far departed from the squalor of the slums, from this fear-stained room. “I am sympathetic. Unfortunately, Soundwave, a mere enforcer doesn’t have the authority to permit a mech into the mines. The mine inspectors, due in a few joor, have an entrance key. You might try them.”

Soundwave’s expression never changed, even as he took the encrypted badge, folding fingers over and subspacing it in one smooth motion. The video feeds for this room must be offline for Barricade to take such a risk--which brought up the question of why the enforcer was doing it in the first place. Frustratingly, there was no way he could ask without giving the game away, not in a room full of listening devices. “Query: likelihood of their cooperation?” he said instead, for the benefit of any audience.

Barricade’s laugh was a low, grinding sound. He downed the rest of his cube, left the flask on the table as he stood. “Like I said, you can ask them.” A pair of optics slid briefly to the symbiont clinging to Soundwave’s shoulder. “When you’re finished, the officer outside will escort you to the exit. Now. If you’ll excuse me, it sounds like there are some helms which need denting.” And maybe, just maybe, a riot to prepare, depending on how much havoc a handful of unwitting mechs could cause. Hope springs eternal. “Amalgamous’ own luck, chronicler.”

Ratbat twisted around to watch the enforcer leave, waiting until the door had irised shut on the busy corridor. The screaming from the distant cells, he noticed with audials twitching, apparently hadn’t ever stopped. _//Definitely, definitely glitched, Soundwave.//_

 _//Agreed. Also, more knowledgeable than expected.//_ The ident-badge Barricade had slid across the table was worth a great deal--four orns worth of midgrade at least--on the black market. Yet the enforcer had handed it over as if it were nothing more than an official reprimand for brawling. There had been no mention of recompense, or of favors owed. It all had been just a little too easy, which made Soundwave wonder what other games were afoot.

His first instinct was to pull back, to retreat and gather more information for analysis. Making moves without sufficient data to understand the other players was a fundamentally flawed strategy, and one that could easily lead to disaster.

But one symbiont was already dead. Others might be dying, trapped and unable to free themselves. They didn’t have the time for Soundwave to test the waters he had waded into; he would have to trust in his own abilities, as well as his cohort, to see this game out to the end. Barricade’s gift, unlooked-for and laden with expectations as it was, would get them in; Soundwave would just have to ensure that he got them back out.

He lifted his arm, inviting Ratbat to climb down to an armored forearm for inspection. The symbiont’s wing drooped painfully, the crumpled surface plating binding the joints and making it impossible to fold normally. Several of the tiny antigrav nodes on the surface had also been damaged, and would need replacement. _//Soundwave: can make temporary repairs to free the joint,//_ he said after a few kliks worth of scans. _//Work, will be painful. Flight, impaired until full repairs are made.//_ He suppressed the urge to order Ratbat home; damaged as he was, there was no guarantee that the little symbiont would make it there safely. And if the worst happened, and Soundwave and the others never returned … a single damaged symbiont stood little chance of survival on his own.

For his part, Ratbat knew perfectly well what happened when he became injured -- he invariably got sent someplace safe. And then Soundwave and the others would be wandering around, down here all by themselves, and he knew they’d be inefficient about it. They’d... they’d waste fuel and time and get lost and Primus knew what else, without him. Ratbat couldn’t let that happen -- not even if he *was* the cause of this particular delay. The little symbiont made his way down Soundwave’s armored forearm. _//Fix it,//_ he sent, carefully taking his vocalizers offline -- both the standard range and the ultrasonic one. He settled himself into his carrier’s hands as Soundwave brought his other palm up, the whole of the symbiont’s body cradled by the length of those cupped talons. Wincing, he spread his damaged wing to its fullest extent, hooking the small end-claw into one of Soundwave’s armor seams, to keep the flight surface from accidentally jerking closed. _// It will be enough so that I can ride with you or Ravage, at the least. The rest of the repairs can wait until we all get back.//_

Soundwave nodded, extending his field, pulsing _reassurance/concern_ through their bond. _//Necessary repairs, not long to complete,//_ he sent, uncoiling several of his smallest secondary cables and pulling a few supplies out of subspace. The crumpled wing plating was punctured through in three places, and mangled in several more. Scanning, Soundwave separated out the disabling damage from the merely cosmetic, which could be left alone. The hampered joint was the main concern--some of the torn plating had been pushed inward, sawing against fine internal wiring each time Ratbat attempted to move the wing.

The first of Soundwave’s manipulator cables, blades folded flat, nudged against the symbiont’s chest. Ratbat lifted his head obediently, spreading his fragile chestplates to expose the socket there. The carrier’s cilia blossomed out to touch the familiar edges of the port, then slipped inside to twine with the waiting connectors. The bladed multitools flared, reconfigured, locking the datacable neatly into place, flush against the symbiont’s armor. Ratbat cycled a quiet vent, and laid his head down upon the thin armor of Soundwave’s cable, feeling the metal warm as his host prepared the datalink.

Being hardlined by his carrier didn’t exactly abate the pain, but did make it... easier to bear.

As with Ravage, the great depth of the little mech’s memory well irised open for Soundwave, but this time, the carrier’s interest was in the comparatively thin shell of physical sensation, the hardware and software that were the least part of a symbiont’s being. Ratbat’s firewalls were no bar at all to Soundwave’s access -- they were essentially the carrier’s own, scaled down and simplified for a symbiont’s far more limited processing capacity. Soundwave selected the sensory pathways and felt along them, muting a few to ease pain -- so much as he could while maintaining sensation -- monitoring them all.

A symbiont was small enough that even Soundwave’s most delicate repairs could easily go awry, if he could not also *feel* what he was doing.

Those jagged ruptures in the wing plating would need to be removed before anything else. Soundwave bent to the task. The blades at the tips of several manipulator cables rotated, layered together, split into piny pincers. The instruments moved to delicately reach and pull the buckled plating upward, to a position where the pointed edges could be cut free. He worked as swiftly as he could, acutely aware of Ratbat’s every flinch and tremble. However, the symbiont never made a sound or tried to jerk away, enduring stoically.

The sharp edges of the punctures now smooth, Soundwave bent the glideplates back into their normal overlapping positions. The fit wasn’t perfect--deformed metal surfaces still scraped against each other--but at least now it was functional, giving Ratbat back full use of the limb. After inspecting the other tears for further hidden damage, Soundwave layered metal-mesh over them, sealing off the delicate systems within from outside contaminants. The metal-mesh also would be consumed by self-repair nanites as they did their work, encouraging them to concentrate on the worst-damaged areas.

One last check to numb a few sensory nodes, and then Soundwave straightened. The cilia disengaged a few at a time, drawing up into their sheath, giving the symbiont time to stabilise his own systems. Then the lock-configured blades released their hold, and the cable withdrew, waiting until the little mech could lift his own head before moving entirely away. “Ratbat: status?”

Ratbat shuttered and unshuttered his optics a few times, folding his armor back to cover the data socket. He twisted his helm around to watch as he manipulated the damaged wing. It was stiff, didn’t move quite right, and he couldn’t feel it a great deal -- but it also did not hurt much, and he could fold it. And he’d be able to fly on it, which is what mattered. Ratbat craned his helm up, remembered to bring his vocalizers back online, and squeaked a reassurance.

 _//All better,//_ the symbiont sent, climbing to a more upright position in Soundwave’s cupped talons -- then his optics narrowed as he cast his carrier a suspicious look. _//Except. Not good enough to fly home. Definitely not.//_ Soundwave’s level regard gave him pause. Perhaps he could divert his carrier. _//Let’s take that fuel with us,/_ / he proposed, selecting the most interesting -- in Ratbat’s estimation -- distraction in the room. Not, mind, that there were many to choose from.

Soundwave vented a sigh at Ratbat’s obvious ploy. _//Ratbat, will inform us if injury worsens,//_ he ordered, then looked over at the indicated flask. It was tempting, and they could certainly use the fuel, but … _//Energon, not ours.//_ he said reluctantly.

Ravage’s snarl was so quiet as to be almost inaudible. _//All of this--it feels like a trap.//_ His bladed tail lashed once. _//I don’t like it.//_

 _//Alternatives, nonexistent,//_ Soundwave reminded all of them. Then, on a narrower band to Ravage alone, _//These games, not new to us.//_

 _//Against tower academics, not warframes,//_ Ravage replied, still unhappy. _//Now more than your reputation is at risk.//_

Outside, the two flightframes carved agitated arcs in the dense, smoggy air. They might not be able to see what was going on, but their link to the cohort was not attenuated by this minor physical distance. _//A trap? Ravage, can you send us your impressions of the badge?//_ Buzzsaw queried. The bond-link thickened with dense sensory transmission.

After some discussion with his class-brother, comparing Ravage’s memory with their own detailed recollections, Laserbeak reached out to contact his carrier. _//We wish to examine the emblem ourselves, Soundwave. But it seems very like the credentials we once carried.//_ Well, Soundwave had carried them, technically. Those ident-badges were heavy. _//It does not appear to have been tampered with.//_

Ratbat, secure in the knowledge that Soundwave had found something else to worry him, clambered over his carrier’s thumb-talon and started scaling his arm. The little symbiont kept his damaged limb closed, climbing with his talons and the claws of one wing only. Ratbat had spent a great deal of time, over the past vorns, witnessing the rise of the black market, observing the mechs who engaged in trade for goods outside their ration-set. Mecha sometimes exchanged things for influence, for future favors... but not, usually, with strangers. _//That glitched enforcer certainly wants something. Since he didn’t tell us what, it is likely a thing which our present course of action will net him, anyway.//_ Pleased with himself, Ratbat at least reached the summit of Soundwave’s shoulder... and then noticed the sudden silence over the bond.

The little glideframe looked down at Ravage’s narrowed optics and long, long teeth... then over at Soundwave’s wary stillness. Oh. _//That’s... probably not good, is it?//_

\---

Both flightframes took a breem to examine Soundwave’s ident-badge, once he emerged from the enforcers’ base.

Getting out had been surprisingly easy. A young black-and-white, clearly sparked near the end of the war, had addressed the carrier with nervous respect and escorted him to the same front entrance. The enforcer had even offered further accompaniment back to the main market -- though he’d not seemed disappointed when Soundwave refused.

Rather the opposite, in fact.

In the momentary quiet of an alley, the flightframes studied Barricade’s ‘gift’ in exacting detail, with all the sensors they possessed. They uploaded their perfect memory files to Soundwave, let him run the comparisons with his far larger processors. The transmitter identified its bearer as a level three special projects structural inspector -- a new title, and not one with which Soundwave was familiar, but clearly a high one. There seemed to be nothing wrong with the badge.

Soundwave could not discount the possibility that the enforcers meant to make some example of him, turn on him, ensure that he was discovered. But retreating was no option at all.

The only way out now... was down.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Barricade's characterization is swiped unashamedly from Antepathy's fics, available here: http://www.fanfiction.net/u/2026667/antepathy


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warning for a brief, semi-explicit description of torture

This was not one of Landfill’s better orns.

First the bizarre vanishing prettybot, then the fragging stupid local enforcers crawling all up his afterburner for about the thousandth time this quarter, and now production was down two percent and he’d be slagged if he knew why. He’d just decided to give another miner the beating he deserved -- there was time, if Landfill made it quick -- when his autocomm pinged, alerting him to the arrival of....

Slag. Fragging slaggity slag -- Landfill tossed the unfortunate miner away, relayed a rapid series of orders. He tried in vain to brush his armor off, and managed only to smear the grime around his battered yellow chassis. The fragging aft-headed *inspector*? Slagging *now*? Landfill prodded his faceplates into their best approximation of a welcoming expression, and hurried up the curving ramp. His internal alert chimed again, insistent. “Inspector, I trust ya had a pleasant--” _fragging, wheel-puncturing, screw-stripping_ “--journey. We just wasn’t expectin’ ya so earl--” Landfill rounded the bend, came to a very sudden halt.

His armor clamped tight to his frame in reflex. Merciful fragging Primus in the Pit. Landfill was so, so slagged now. They’d have to bring in a ‘dozer-mech to scrape up the remains, that’s how slagged he was.

Prettybot was back.  Landfill gaped up at the mech who, the mine's sensors told him, carried the inspector's access codes.

Soundwave looked down at the smaller mech. There was no deferential bowing this time; he used every inch of his height, sensor panels half-flared to reinforce his authority. The ident-badge was summoned just long enough for the holographic signature to be evident, then disappeared back into subspace. “Arrival, inconvenient?” he said evenly.

He said nothing more, using silence to do the rest. Intimidation worked far better than facile lies in situations such as these, he knew. It allowed the overseer’s own guilt and fear to come up with an explanation for Soundwave’s arrival, as well as his earlier lack of credentials.

Ravage still paced at his side, lending his own special brand of intimidation to Soundwave’s authority. Laserbeak and Buzzsaw maintained their distance; invisible in the murky air, they could easily slip into the mine once the overseer’s back was turned. Ratbat, however, was docked safely within his carrier. The small symbiont had protested, but Soundwave had stood firm. Bluffing their way into the mine could be dangerous if their credentials proved inadequate, and Soundwave was unwilling to risk the already-injured symbiont unnecessarily.

“Erm--uh … no, Inspector? It’s just … surprisin’, that ya were here before, and--” the overseer’s vocalizer stuttered, snapping off in mid-sentence in an obvious override. The mech obviously reconsidered what he was about to say, and Soundwave could almost see the wheels turning. Had Soundwave’s earlier visit been a test? A trap? An attempt to catch the overseer in the middle of a black-market deal? Optics flickered over the carrier’s tall frame in obvious indecision. The moment when the overseer decided that it just wasn’t worth the risk to ask questions was almost pathetically obvious, the mech’s entire demeanor shifting instantly into obsequious helpfulness.

“No--no inconvenience,” he said, spreading blunt hands and shifting armor into a more welcoming pose. “Sorry, Inspector--was just doin’ the rounds, didn’t know ya were going to be back so fast.” Sliding right over the circumstances of their earlier meeting as if slicked by lubricant, Landfill continued. “I suppose ya want to get right to it? Anythin’ in particular ya need to look at?”

Soundwave gave him another level stare. “The mine.”

“Right! O’course! Eheheh …” The overseer backed up hastily. “Right this way, then,” he said, pushing past a group of worn mechs stacking up slabs of newly-cut raw metal. Optics downcast, miners got out of Soundwave’s path with an alacrity they seemed not to show for the overseer. Led by the overseer, Soundwave descended into the jagged black mouth of the metalworks, and the last, distant hint of sky vanished as the mine closed over him.

The main tunnels were hugely wide and thoroughly traveled, the sides choked with abandoned equipment in varying stages of repair, crawling with mechs so blackened with grease and char that they seemed like shadows of themselves. Smelting furnaces winnowed rare metals from common, expelling molten slag like rivers of fire. Conversation among the miners quieted as Soundwave passed, then started up again after, so thick he could feel the transmissions like a flow over his panels. Now that the immediate danger was past, he allowed Ratbat to undock, the little mech climbing up to ride on one shoulder. Ratbat’s sensors were configured far better than his own for low-light conditions, and with layers upon layers of metal muffling their scans, they needed every advantage they could find.

The heat and pressure outside seemed benign compared to the environment inside the mine. Arsenic and elemental sulphur were both liquids at this temperature -- as pockets were uncovered in the smaller tunnels, mecha hauled reinforced cubes of the valuable metals out to be cooled, their arms coated to the elbow. Huge miners, some of them warframes still corded with the welding-scars of battles long past, dragged great slabs of cut iron on rolling sleds. The stuff was so low grade, it would be discarded or used as cheap building material.

Ravage lashed his tail as he stalked at Soundwave’s side, taking what sensor readings he could in the echoing metal chaos. _//We need to be a half-filum deeper,//_ he sent his carrier, faceted optics gleaming as he switched from spectrum to spectrum. The warm glow of a distant radium source caught at his attention, and he slowed, conferred with Ratbat, then indicated a side tunnel. The radioactive metal was apparently valuable, and these miners would likely have dug down to tap the vein.

Soundwave changed course, leaving the overseer to scramble after them, too cowed to question. The presence of the yellow mech was an irritant, but one he forced himself to tolerate--the overseer knew this mine far better than he did, after all, and his specialized knowledge might be required.

As they descended, the tunnels became smaller and more branched, the lighting nodes fewer and further between. The ground trembled as unsparked drones scraped away great chunks of metal, lengthening the capillary passages. Mecha paced along behind to haul away iron debris, to spot pockets and fissures of more valuable substances. The constant mining left behind a vast interlinking network of tunnels and crawlspaces, levels overlapping. At every juncture, Ravage silently indicated a path, leading them in the direction of his previous coordinates. Unseen in the dimness, the two flightframes kept close to the jagged ceiling.

Given long enough, autophage drones would repair even these gaping tunnels. But for now, the ones that managed to get into the mine to try were crushed under pede, and piled to be hauled away with the rest of the detritus for the empties to pick over.

Soundwave shifted the range on his optics towards infrared, sifting through the myriad heat sources in the absence of more conventional light. In the narrower confines of these rough-hewn tunnels, spreading his sensory panels was an invitation for disaster, so he did what he could without them, opening himself to scan all frequencies, filtering out miner conversations and the faint, distant babble from the surface in favor of other, quieter signals. Especially one; a very specific, narrow-banded channel, coded for carriers and used only by symbionts in distress.

The deeper they went, the more noticeably reluctant the overseer became. Finally he gathered up enough courage to protest. “Ah--Inspector? Ya don’t wanna … inspect the larger parts of the mine, maybe?”

Soundwave stopped, turned. “New production areas, also require inspection,” he pointed out. This deep, the heat was oppressive, beating against his armor. Surface sensors had begun to ping uncomfortably, warning him of above-optimal temperatures, and he could feel his internal systems laboring to circulate coolant around core components. The overseer, built for these conditions, appeared unaffected. “Area, dangerous?”

“Well, eh--not quite?” Landfill squirmed under that visored stare. “No more’n the rest of the mine, anyhow. But these are just exploratory tunnels, ya know? Not much being pulled out of here yet, so they’re not very interestin’.”

 _//He’s hiding something. The missing mecha--or something else?//_ Ratbat observed. The glideframe’s optics were nothing more than glittering pinpoints of red in the gloom.

 _//We’re closer to where I found Minebreak's remains,//_ Ravage put in. _//But there’s solid metal between here and there. Not sure if this tunnel will lead us around or if we have to backtrack. Shall we scout ahead?//_

Soundwave glanced to the overseer, noting the way the mech’s armor plates had pulled closer to his frame, rather than spreading to vent heat more efficiently, like Soundwave’s. Landfill was already visibly nervous, and becoming more so by the klik. _//Ravage: remain. Direct Laserbeak and Buzzsaw.//_

Overhead, the flightframes darted away, silent and agile even in the darkness -- untraceable by a mech equipped with merely standard sensors. The bond-link thickened with transmissions, as Ravage employed the flyers’ scanning equipment and locating units to develop a more thorough sense of their surroundings. With every turn they took, the overseer looked increasingly... frightened.

Buzzsaw warned his carrier before they came to the end of the tunnel, and so Soundwave was well prepared for the dropoff. The little mining space opened into a massive horizontal bore, a perfectly circular shaft twice as tall as Soundwave. The iron edges of the hole were chewed and smooth. In dozens of places along the walls, small dark gaps hinted at an underlying complexity of a system of natural caverns. At his side, the overseer cringed. “Heh. I, uh. Looks like one of them, uh, drillers got down here. We’ll... we’ll haveta hunt it down. Real soon, I mean, Inspector.”

 _//This is a few hundred meters, at most, from the place the autophages emerged,//_ Ravage sent. Exploring to the right, Laserbeak found a slender tunnel where an exploratory mining drone had burrowed down, grazed the bed of an underground lava stream, then broken through into a cavern. The tunnel still ran with slag, but the flyer was able to take a few scans, enough to confirm the location with Ravage.

The Solnus archaeological site was almost directly below them.

“Drillers, common in area?” Soundwave asked, stepping down into the large, driller-bored tunnel as if he were curious about the local wildlife. He’d heard of them, of course--immense mechanoid creatures that seemed to exist only to chew their way through Cybertron’s subterranean levels, devouring everything in their path, nonliving metal and mecha alike. He moved to the right, reaching out to touch one wall, marvelling at the overlapping grooves that showed where the metal had been chewed away. Cyberbiology had never been his particular interest; still, the sheer scale of the creature’s activities was quite impressive. “Miners, lost to their encroachment?”

Silently, he added to the others, _//Missing cohort--any signs found?//_

Landfill hesitated at the intersection of the two tunnels, shifting from pede to pede as he tried to decide whether or not to follow. “Not--usually, Inspector. There are ways ta drive ‘em off, but--I think we need ta go back. Driller-tunnels aren’t safe, an’ we’re a long way down …”

Laserbeak pinged back a negative, launched himself to search further down the tunnel to the right. Buzzsaw, who had taken the left side, was silent.

“Uhm,” said the overseer, taking a step backwards. “You know, maybe I should... yanno. Go back to where we can comm for some reinfor--” behind him, Ravage parted his jaws in a growl so deep it made metaldust vibrate up from the ground around his paws. The yellow mech froze.

 _//Boss.//_ Buzzsaw’s touch was tentative, the live image file preceded with a cautionary glyph, so that the transmission required deliberate intent to open and view. So that it would not catch the receiver by surprise.

Splayed out across the overlapping grooves of the driller’s tunnel was a mound of discolored metal, an angular pile of struts and cables and long curved talons, still shrouded with scraps of fin plating. A lone autophage trundled away from the pile, a small piece of sparkcasing -- subtly unlike any other metal in existence -- in its small crab claws.

Dropping any pretense at an inspection, Soundwave headed straight to where Buzzsaw waited, ignoring Landfill’s echoing protests. It did not take long to catch up to the flightframe. Buzzsaw, crouched next to the little pile of remains, looked up at him.

_//It’s--not good, Boss.//_

Soundwave dropped to one knee, reaching out to touch what was left of the waveframe. He had half-expected murder--a pierced spark chamber, a crushed helm--the familiar signs of a quick and brutal offlining.

What had happened to Minebreak had been brutal--but it hadn’t been quick.

Small limbs, crushed and torn, twisted at the joints. Plated fins that still showed signs of scorching, melted at the edges. Autophages had carried away most of the waveframe’s helm and faceplates, but enough of the chassis and spark chamber remained to show how they had been torn apart, cracked open along multiple seams, the surface scored with marks from much-larger talons. The piercing of the spark chamber was what had killed Minebreak; but the small symbiont’s frame had been almost torn to pieces long before that final blow had ever landed.

There was the scrape of pede against tunnel, and Soundwave turned.

“Query: you responsible for this?” Cold fury laced each word, making it distinct, harshly metallic. He rose to his full height, advancing on the suddenly apprehensive overseer. Landfill backed up hastily, hands lifting in futile appeasement.

“W-what? No! I didn’t--” He looked down at the remains, stumbling backwards as a snarling Ravage joined Soundwave in his advance. “I don’t know nothin’ about this! I don’t even know who that is!”

The bladeframe stalked -- there was no other word for it -- the yellow mech; it stalked him like he was a glitchmouse, like he’d gone where he’d had no right to trespass. Slow, every paw placement a liquid threat, and the shudder up Landfill’s backstruts whispered that he was already dead where he stood. Nothing should move like that -- too loose, too strong. The symbiont’s teeth were shortblades, glinting, knives in the darkness.

Slagging Primus. And he’d thought these fragging things were obsolete.

“I just, I just follow orders, that’s all! And they said not ta come down here, not to mine this quadrant, and we didn’t ‘cepting them couple times when it got too hard ta meet quota, I swear ta Primus!” Landfill’s vocalizer cracked, sputtered. His transformation seams ached, pleading him to drop into altmode and flee. But run where? Right into the bore-jaws of a fragging driller? And, and seeing that bladeframe move...

...he didn’t think he’d be fast enough, anyway.

“They.” The word was flat, uninflected. “Query: define ‘they’.”

“I--” Landfill’s vocalizer stuttered, reset, then stuttered again. “I--I don’t know for sure.” He glanced down at the bladeframe, and backed up another couple hasty steps. “The orders came down from my bosses--from higher up than my bosses. They never told me who’d made the decision--an’--an’ I didn’t wanna ask, yanno?” Would he have time to charge and fire his shoulder-guns before that crazy-aft symbiont tore his faceplates off? Somehow, he didn’t think so. “No one was supposed ta be down here, but I’d never--they never told me ta kill anyone! I got nothin’ at all to do with this!”

Soundwave sampled that frantic speech, analyzing the modulations and stresses, the rise and fall in the word-patterns. Either the overseer was the best actor he’d ever known, or he was telling the truth. Short of hacking the mech’s cortex via hardline and sieving through his memory nodes by force, there was no way to be absolutely certain--and despite what most mecha thought, his frameclass did not have the specialized firewalls and interrogation protocols required for that kind of hack. That remained the domain of code specialists and a very few special ops mecha, and Soundwave was neither.

“Your mine, now a crime scene,” Soundwave said, holding the overseer’s gaze. “Recommendation, return to surface, notify enforcers.”

“R-right. Yeah, uhm--I’ll just go do that? Right now, I mean,” Landfill said, backing up fast enough to stumble over his own pedes. “I agree, murder’s bad for business, gonna go tell the enforcers right now while ya--do whatever ya need ta.” Another step, and Landfill transformed, the tough material of his wheel-treads squealing against the tunnel floor as he suited action to words and beat a hasty retreat.

Ravage snorted in disgust. “Worthless.”

“Agreed.” Soundwave turned back to the remains. They now knew how Minebreak had died--but not *why*. Kneeling, he picked up the remains of that tiny spark chamber with his talon-tips. He held the shards briefly in his palm, then subspaced them. The researcher in him cringed at the thought of contaminating a crime scene, but somehow he doubted that the enforcers would ever be allowed to investigate this particular murder. “Objective remains: Amplitude, rest of cohort still missing.”

With one last, silent snarl in the direction of the fleeing overseer, Ravage wrenched his head around, padded quietly back to his carrier’s side to examine the smoothly chewed metal around Minebreak’s remains. After a few moments, Laserbeak glided back from his search, landing silently on Soundwave’s unoccupied shoulder, as if reluctant to even touch the ground near the waveframe’s corpse. But he lent his sharp optics and wide scanning range to Ravage’s search, as did his class-brother.

A pattern began to emerge from the scuffs, from the spatters of grease and lubricants, and the trace residue of energon. With this heat, the spilled fuel itself had evaporated, but the dissolved metals in it had not and the deposits could be detected by finely-tuned chemoreceptors. The gaps leading down into the natural cavern system attracted Ravage’s attention.

 _//They seized Minebreak here,//_ Ravage surmised, nosing at the place where the driller’s borehole had carved through the wall of a smaller, snaking passage. The hole was large enough for a full-size mech, albeit rather a tight squeeze. The corroded iron rim showed a great deal of recent scraping, as if a number of mechs had worked themselves through the gap, in considerable haste, leaving streaks of color nanites in some places. _//But dragged him out there to... finish.//_

 _//For more space? Or to make the act more visible?//_ Ratbat asked in his coldly calculating way, and did not miss the faint, flinching ripple across the bond from the other symbionts. The glideframe stirred a little, folding his wings tighter across his chest.

“Minebreak, tortured,” Soundwave said, making no attempt to soften the words. “Usual objective of torture, information. Information held by Minebreak, likely shared by cohort.” He went over to the smaller tunnel, knelt to peer down it. “Minebreak: offlined when caught. No other bodies found; possibility remains that others escaped, still hiding. Equally possible, enemies still searching.” He sat back on his pedes, looked over at Ravage. “Query: best locations to search for symbionts separated from carrier?”

The flightframes’ armor was tight against their bodies, despite the heat. Even the thought of being forcibly separated from a bonded carrier bore with it a black haze of distress. Buzzsaw could understand that pain all too well. _//They would try to stay close to Amplitude,//_ Buzzsaw offered. Wherever the investigator had gone. Provided he wasn’t... in as bad a shape as Minebreak.

Ravage twisted his neck back to regard his master, thinking. _//Wherever they fled, Minebreak’s slayers would have tried to follow. Laserbeak, Buzzsaw -- begin by checking the small places nearby. Take care; they will be fearful.//_

Having something to do helped calm the flyers’ anxiety. Obedient to the most senior of their cohort, the agile flyers launched themselves down into the natural tunnels. Capable of hovering or even flying upside down, the symbionts began to examine with care each of the small gaps that opened onto the main passage, looking for any indication that a larger mech had tried to claw at something inside. Ravage himself padded into the larger, snaking tunnel.

The natural system of caves was like a warren, with cracks and narrow interlinking shafts everywhere. The main channel, however, was large enough to permit even Soundwave passage, if he were careful enough. Many mechs had traveled this way -- the walls were scraped and gouged in places. Senses alert, the bladeframe stalked down branching corridors, scanning, returning to the central tunnel to try another branch. A full filum into the cave system -- almost half a joor’s search -- and Ravage caught a flicker, just at the edge of his sensor sweep. He froze, running further scans. The metaldust in one tight-twisted side corridor, when illuminated, revealed the subtle indication of small pedeprints. _//I have something, Soundwave,//_ Ravage commed back, turning to pick his way down the narrow crack. _//The space is small. Can you send me one of the flyers?//_

Soundwave, carefully moving his way down the main tunnel, sensor panels tucked in as tight as possible, paused. _//Laserbeak.//_

 _//I shall be there momentarily,//_ came the answer, and a few kliks later Laserbeak’s lithe form flashed past his shoulder, gliding towards where Ravage waited. Landing on a nearby outcrop, he peered down at the faint tracks. _//Shall I go high, and you low?//_ he asked Ravage.

 _//Yes.//_ Focused on the hunt, Ravage said nothing more, prowling into the side corridor. Laserbeak spread his wings, gliding silently overhead, only the occasional glint of silver armor betraying his presence. The tunnel was narrow and winding even by their standards, and in many places small enough that there wasn’t even enough room to fly, forcing him to glide from one outcropping to the next, eeling around protrusions and through narrowed corners.

Another fork, this time with one obvious dead-ended branch, and another that twisted downward. It also ended behind spines of sharp-edged metal--a broken layer of iron, faulted into serrated and rusted teeth where the metal had torn apart. Ravage paused, assessing--and from the darkness beyond that jagged barrier came a sibilant, defiant snarl.

In the tight confines of the dead end, Ravage went still. _//Symbiont, carrier-kin, Chronicler; be at ease,//_ the bladeframe sent over a broad spectrum, fashioning his glyphs in the old, ritual way. Laserbeak backwinged, sharp talons scrabbling as he clung equally to the sloping wall and ceiling. Flakes of rust drifted down.

The carrier-coded channel, the emergency wavelength that Soundwave still monitored, flared bright with a sudden, panicked burst of dread. _\--trapped-discovered-grasping-fighting--_

 _//Run!//_ and a silver horror boiled up between the rusted metal teeth.

It was on Ravage in an instant, too many bladed legs and a quartet of snapping mandibles in a small, sleek, elongated helm; sensory spines laid flat against a body that was speed made manifest in metal. Its snarl was the white-hot hiss of a quenched weapon, and droplets of fluid coated its saw-edged mouth, evaporating in the heat, caking those jaws with a powder that burned.

That flare of utter fear, the desperate call, was all Soundwave needed. Spark-deep protocols responded instinctively, spurring a carrier’s reflexive response to a terrified symbiont, a wordless call that, always and ever, meant only one thing. _\--Here. I am here. Protection/safety/shelter--I am here.--_

Ravage snarled as those razored mandibles snapped at him, twisting aside with only microns to spare. The urge to snap back was almost overwhelming. Only the wisdom--hard-earned over centivorns--to know when *not* to fight, kept his own blades at bay as he dodged the strange symbiont’s terrified lunge.

From above, Ravage and the stranger were nothing more than a twisting, lightning-fast tangle of plating and blades and teeth. Laserbeak craned his neck, wings half-flared, wanting to intervene but seeing no opening in which to do so. _//Friend!//_ he sent frantically, resorting to the most basic mechling-pidgin in the hopes it would penetrate past the fear. _//No hurt! Friend! Friend!//_

Keening, the slender symbiont disengaged and fled down the tunnel, slipping under Ravage’s chassis in a whiplash of pure speed. Terror and desperation shunted higher processes to one side, brought base programming to the fore--and those instincts told him to find a carrier, to go to the source of that call.

Hearing the scrambling approach of claws, Soundwave knelt, folding himself down upon his pedes and spreading his hands in front of him, open and facing upward. _//Here. Soundwave: is here.//_

The symbiont skidded around a corner, optics spiralled wide in terror, then stopped short at the sight of Soundwave, his multiple clawed pedes striking sparks as they scrambled to a halt. The symbiont froze, armor bristling, vents flared wide. _//Carrier. Stranger-not-Amplitude! Fear/uncertainty/run--//_

 _//Yes. Carrier.//_ Soundwave sent, never moving. _//Protection, here. Safety, here.//_

Before Soundwave’s spread hands, the turbofox trembled, darted away from the carrier, back -- then fled again, streaking back down the narrow passage. The symbiont, with his segmented body and twelve disturbingly-articulated legs was lithe as a bolt of quicksilver, vaulting obstacles or scurrying under them, quick as thought. The foxframe darted under Ravage once more, turned on him with furiously snapping mandibles.

Ravage retreated without a fight, permitting the foxframe to hold him at bay. He backed away from the foxframe’s jagged little nest, down the other branching fork. Metal clinked, slid, and two more symbionts moved out behind the streak of silver fury. One was a mechkin, a bipedal mech in miniature; the other, a spined and whipcord serpentframe. Both were battered, though the serpent was moreso. The mechkin assisted him over obstacles as he could. The razor snake’s sending was a sibilance of electromagnetic waves. _//Bainite! Enough -- calm! A carrier... these are no foes!//_

Even still, the foxframe kept himself firmly between his cohort and Ravage, hissing as the little group scrambled up towards the main tunnel, clambering over fallen chunks of iron and edging around fractures. Shivering with the need to run, Bainite escorted them back towards Soundwave, darting four lengths back for every five forward, his panic abating only a little as Ravage was left behind. The little group cleared the last ridge of raw iron, and the mechkin gasped at the sight of a carrier’s blocky, distinctive build, as if the small symbiont had not believed the evidence of his other senses. His optics darted between the carrier and the winged symbiont on the big mech’s shoulder; he trembled nearly as badly as the turbofox.

A stillness, a wary pause. Then the serpentframe undulated forward, flowed up over Soundwave’s right wrist, supple and powerful coils twining the carrier’s talons. _//Templar,//_ he transmitted, the single ancient glyph bright with hope, recognition, shadowed with loss.

Moving slowly, still acutely aware of the foxframe’s barely-controlled desire to flee, Soundwave shifted one hand, supporting the serpentine symbiont with one as he stroked the narrow, spined helm with two taloned fingers, expanding his field as best he could to project warmth and safety. Even, after a moment, releasing a bit of the wall he had built around his emotions, so that they could sense his sorrow--different from their own, not the tearing pain of a brother’s horrifying death, but real nonetheless--a carrier’s grief and regret for a symbiont lost.

 _//Memory-keeper,//_ he responded in kind, a complex intertwined glyph of life and remembrance and Cybertron, and just as ancient; so old that the very shape of the word had fallen from the common vocabulary of mecha.

He inclined his head respectfully towards the others. _//Designation: Soundwave. Others: Ravage, Laserbeak, Buzzsaw, and Ratbat,//_ Soundwave said calmly, indicating each of his symbionts in turn. _//Offering protection, assistance, with your predicament.//_

Ravage? One of the ancients? And Buzzsaw.... The serpentframe regarded the far larger carrier, crimson optics unblinking, his coils a tensed and shifting sleekness that filled Soundwave’s palm and wrapped his wrist. Some of those scale-plates were badly gouged, a few torn partly from their articulated moorings, split or scratched by a big mech’s heavy talons. _//Amplitude. Pyrite,//_ he returned, likewise introducing his carrier and sibling-cohort in order, as was proper; clinging to protocol though all else had fallen. _//M-- Flipsides. Bainite.//_

The carrier’s fingers returned, stroking a slow pressure across the jointed plates of Pyrite’s helm, stirring the symbiont’s fractured and aching field. The carrier’s own EM spectrum was nothing like Amplitude’s, was deep and reflective and spread a slow warmth that felt like a bulwark against the more mundane heat of the mines. _//I am not sure, Soundwave, that you understand our present predicament, or you would not be so swift to offer assistance.//_ There was a certain, exhausted wryness in that.

A little at a time, both other symbionts moved into the wash of Soundwave’s field. Bainite scrubbed his folded mandibles against the ground, rubbing away the accumulation of toxic powder. The red and white mechkin -- Flipsides -- kept some distance between himself and the foxframe, even jerking back a little when Bainite moved too close. His wariness was unusual, for a bonded cohort. He took a few more steps, stumbling a little, and laid a tentative hand on Soundwave’s shin plating, cycling a shuddering vent.

Soundwave’s own symbionts kept their distance, watching; even Ratbat stayed crouched and silent, wings folded tight around him. Buzzsaw’s sending was quiet, tightly-banded, to avoid disturbing these critical moments. _//Pyrite -- I know him. Cybertronian wildlife and natural cyberbiology. A good mech.//_ There was a pause, and Buzzsaw added, a reluctant hint of jealousy coloring the glyphs, _//he is as experienced as I.//_ Old, then, and high-ranking, with a memory well eons deep.

Soundwave pinged his acknowledgment of Buzzsaw’s information, but kept his focus on the newly-found symbionts. They were injured; he could see tears in their plating, small wounds from the clawing talons of their pursuers. The serpentframe had taken the brunt of the damage, though he showed clear signs of recent repair. Injured, frightened for themselves and their carrier, and likely low on fuel, it would take very little to startle them into disappearing the maze of tunnels once more.

“Your assessment, accurate,” he answered Pyrite, even as he reached down--slowly and carefully--to Flipsides and Bainite’s battered frames, allowing them to touch or grab hold, if they wished. “Our knowledge, incomplete. Ravage, discovered evidence of Minebreak’s death.” Flipsides keened in grief, and both he and Bainite moved forward, pressing trembling frames against Soundwave’s sheltering bulk. “Decision made to search for possible sibling symbionts. Identity of carrier, size of cohort initially unknown. Amplitude’s name, revealed through investigation, but objectives and enemies remain unknown.” He paused, unwilling to presume to order symbionts not his own. “Query: status? Medical aid, energon required? Other siblings, still missing?”

 _//No others.//_ Pyrite’s sleekly powerful build afforded little space for any structures save those strictly necessary; his vocalizer was a small, glitchy affair. _//And Flipsides has been making what repairs he can without supplies. But Amplitude... our carrier. He...//_ the serpentframe halted.

 _//Sixty-three joors ago, he turned himself over to our pursuers. To free Minebreak.//_ The mechkin interrupted, his own vocalizer offline, his glyphs deliberately, carefully uncolored. He pressed himself tighter against the side of Soundwave’s pede, small fingers catching in the seams of knee and shin armor. The little mech shivered. _//We fled, and they said... that if we came, they would let him go. But we saw....//_

“The Senate is keeping something down here. Something important.” Even pressed against Soundwave’s hand, the foxframe could not keep himself entirely still, winding himself between the carrier’s fingers. His words were clipped and angry. “Something they’re guarding.”

Important enough to kill for, apparently. Soundwave exchanged looks with his cohort. Their rescue had just become considerably more complicated.

Pulling an assortment of their limited medical supplies out of subspace, Soundwave offered the metal-mesh and nanite gel to Flipsides. If the others were relying on the mechkin for repairs, the symbiont likely specialized in medical techniques and research. “Assistance offered for any other necessary repairs,” he told the small mech, then redirected his attention to Bainite. “Query: nature of Amplitude’s imprisonment? Data required for tactical assessment: carrier injuries, enemy numbers, weapons, all other pertinent information.” It might very well be too dangerous to attempt a rescue of the other carrier. Soundwave was no enforcer, no investigator with a spark-deep need to find the truth, to expose corruption wherever he found it. He was a chronicler and an archivist, coded to preserve and protect, and the safety of the symbionts--both his own and Amplitude’s--remained his primary concern.

Pyrite, at least, didn’t seem surprised by the question. _//Amplitude isn’t far,//_ he sent, curling a bit tighter around Soundwave’s hand. _//He is online, but … injured. We couldn’t get too close; the last time we tried to find a way to him, they almost caught us. //_ He sent over an image, time-tagged several joors ago, showing an immense cavern, with a shackled carrier-mech lying in the middle of the broad, open expanse of floor. Other than the sheer drop off one side, there were no upthrust protrusions, no torn edges or deformed hollows that a symbiont could use for cover. In short, no way to approach without being seen by either ground or air, something the heavily-armored mecha standing guard had obviously counted on.

The mechkin reached out to take the proffered medical supplies gratefully, the aluminum tube of nanogel as long as his forearm. Giving the turbofox a wide berth, Flipsides left his place, went around to Soundwave’s hand, the carrier’s talons still corded with Pyrite’s coils. The serpentframe was a complex creature, his frame intricately crafted -- which made for many things to fix. Flipsides found a split scale, and started work. The small mech ducked his helm, aware of the point of Soundwave’s query. As, surely, Pyrite must have been.

Bainite snarled, a short snapping sound. “I will not leave him.” The turbofox was more than old enough to be under no false impressions regarding carriers, or their motivations.

“Tactical assessment, incomplete,” Soundwave pointed out evenly, refusing to allow himself to be affected by the foxframe’s agitation. “Regardless, symbiont safety of paramount importance.”

Ratbat shifted uneasily. “Boss--I don’t like the idea of leaving Amplitude. They’re holding on to him to try and lure these guys out. If that doesn’t work, they’ll just offline him and then hunt down Amplitude’s cohort anyway.”

Ravage growled a soft agreement, padding silently from the darkness of the tunnel, though he gave the three new symbionts a wide berth. _//Unbonded symbionts are easy prey,//_ he said, the plating along his neck bristling at the thought. _//And I do not like the thought of Minebreak’s murderers being left to kill others.//_

Buzzsaw wrapped his tail around his outcropping of rust and iron, unwound it, wrapped it again. He couldn’t seem quite to find a comfortable position. He didn’t mind, particularly, the other two clustered around Soundwave’s pedes -- he’d done much the same, once. Primus knew this was stress enough and more to lead a symbiont to seek shelter. But did Pyrite have to lounge in the hand of a carrier not his own like that? It wasn’t too forward, to be so close... quite. But even still.... “Let us scout. We can stay near the ceiling, amidst the crags and fissures. We will be unseen.”

A few flakes of rust rained down on him, and Buzzsaw looked up, hissing irritably at Laserbeak, who had glided close to cling to a nearby crack. The other flightframe reached down without comment and began grooming the flecks of rust from his helm with little nibbling touches. Laserbeak paid particular attention to the small sensory spines, nestled between the blades on the back of Buzzsaw’s neck. Slowly, his class-brother began to relax.

“What are they hiding?” asked Ratbat, peering down at the new mechs. “And who’s hiding it?”

Silence for a moment. Pyrite shifted his long body, coils shuffling over one another as he exposed another injured place for the mechkin. Flipsides was not a medic, did not -- could not -- possess a medic’s specialized hardware, but there was a great deal of knowledge guiding those hands all the same. _//Proteus, perhaps. A chance glimpse at one of his message chits brought us here.//_ The serpentframe turned his regard slowly from Ratbat to Soundwave, a quiet calculation. _//And we are not certain. But we believe -- I believe -- they stockpile energon.//_

A ripple went through the cohort, and even Soundwave stilled, absorbing the implications of that. “Stockpiling energon--when allotments are cut a little more every cycle, and mecha are offlining for lack of fuel?” Ratbat said slowly. Their cohort was not as badly off as the empties; at least they still *had* an allotment, no matter how meager, that they could survive on. For now. Though Soundwave could barely remember what a full tank even felt like.

Pyrite dipped his head in a nod. _//That is what our Master believed, though we had not yet found the location of their cache.//_

Ravage snarled, low and vicious, and Soundwave could not help but feel the bladeframe’s anger, twin to the slow-burning resentment in his own spark. All the scraping and searching for any assignment that would garner them an allotment, hiding his worry as each vorn their supplies dwindled a fraction more … only to find out that there had been energon stockpiled away all this time? Energon that the powerful obviously had no intention of sharing--and the supply had to be considerable for these mecha, whoever they were, to go to such lengths to conceal it.

It was uncomfortable, that anger. Soundwave preferred a calm, orderly existence; one where he could perform the functions he had been designed for as archivist and chronicler, one where his cohort was safe and respected. But it was … difficult … to remain logical, rational, when the world seemed to be conspiring against him at every turn, wearing away at all of them until they were nothing more than shells of what they once had been.

Soundwave pushed his anger down, rerouting back to more logical, analytical paths of thought. “Rescue of Amplitude, difficult and dangerous,” he told all of them. “Our armament, minimal. Query: nature of the mecha holding your master. Warframes or civilian mecha?”

Pyrite thought back for a moment, his optics flicking over to his cohort as they conferred. _//All civilian,//_ he said confidently. _//None of them had warbrands or military builds; just armor upgrades and carry-weapons in addition to their frametype defenses. All ground-mecha, of various frametypes.//_ Amplitude had worked among military mecha once, Soundwave remembered. Pyrite likely had a great deal of experience in watching warframes at work.

Pyrite shifted another coil, exposing another swath of cracked scales for Flipsides. The metalmesh, cut carefully down to size, held the edges of each armor plate together. It would take time for the symbiont’s own nanites to make full repairs, but the mesh kept parts from shifting, helped ease the joints beneath. Flipsides’ touch was firm, careful.

“They’re arrayed like the Kaons were, in the Crybion standoff,” said Flipsides, not looking up from his work. Peyrite twisted around to regard the junior symbiont, and the mechkin ducked his head a little, but continued anyway. “Except with elevators, instead of a space cable.”

 _//And underground, in a far more confined area,//_ Peyrite corrected, shortly. _//And civilians, not warframes.//_

Laserbeak and Buzzsaw glanced at each other, picking up on the friction between the new cohort. New additions, perhaps, that had not yet settled into their roles?

Soundwave, wisely, didn’t take sides. Interfering with another carrier’s cohort almost never ended well, for either the carrier or the symbionts. Instead he remarked, “Both considerations, important. Style of tactics used, also significant, may create exploitable weaknesses.” It was a pleasant surprise to find a symbiont who held both medical and military data, and Soundwave could not prevent a certain warmth in his field as he continued. “Crybion standoff, ended by attack from unexpected direction by Tr!klcctch forces. Elevators, possible weak link.” He looked at Bainite. “Query: number of guards?” The image had shown at least five mecha, but he wasn’t about to rely on a single static image to give him an accurate count of the enemy.

“Six, by my count,” said Bainite, freezing, and then darting like a living bolt of lightning to the top of an outcropping, where he stood poised, listening. Just as quickly satisfied that nothing moved behind them, he flowed back down, his many dagger-clawed legs finding impossible purchase on vertical surfaces. “Those three near Amplitude, and the three near the elevators and the large chamber, which we have not yet seen inside.” He was not a big symbiont -- very slender and perhaps two mechanometers long from the tip of his mandibles to the end of his pair of lashing tails -- but his sheer speed made it seem like there was somehow more of him. Or less. It was difficult to say.

Ratbat rubbed his wingclaw against the anchoring seam of Soundwave’s armor, faceplates pinched as he thought. He’d not missed Soundwave’s interest in those elevators. He paused a moment, to query Ravage, and then calculated for optimum efficiencies. _//This place is honeycombed with small tunnels, Ravage says. The fox and the serpent might search out the exterior of the elevator shaft through them, while the flightframes scout inside.//_

 _//Keep the mechkin with you, Boss. They’re fragging slow.//_ Buzzsaw sent, then bent his head, submitting to Laserbeak’s renewed interest in removing every last flake of rust from his back.

Soundwave considered his cohort’s proposals. He still didn’t like the risks they were taking; every instinct he had was calling for him to take all the symbionts back to the surface and far away from any danger. But … they were right. Even on the surface, they would not be safe--not for long. Even if Soundwave did his best to protect Amplitude’s cohort as well as his own, he would still be just one carrier against any number of far more heavily armed assassins.

Reluctantly, hating the necessity of it, he nodded. “Pyrite, Bainite: scout the tunnels surrounding cavern, elevator shaft. Our aim, possible access and sabotage. Laserbeak, Buzzsaw: scout area from the air. Ravage, will search surrounding areas, remain close in case any of the others require assistance.” He paused, looking down at the little mechkin still working digilently on patching Pyrite’s wounds. “Ratbat, Flipsides: will remain and attempt to establish contact with Amplitude via cohort bond. His assistance, invaluable.”

Smoothing down a last bit of mesh, Flipsides looked up in surprise, but nodded. Buzzsaw bristled a little in aggravation, sensory spines lifting--then subsided at a nudge from Laserbeak. _//Right. Got it, Boss.//_

Soundwave opened a channel, encompassing all of them. _//All: caution required. Your lives, important. Understood?//_

Laserbeak tilted his head, then flowed down to land on Soundwave’s unoccupied shoulder. _//We understand, Master,//_ he sent, ducking his head and spreading his wings in a graceful, archaic bow. _//We shall fly silent and swift, and none shall see us pass.//_

Soundwave smoothed a finger along that sharp-edged beak. “Go.”


	5. Chapter 5

No more needed to be said. Laserbeak nodded, and took to the air once more, Buzzsaw joining him as they disappeared into the darkness of the tunnel.

Bainite streaked away down the twisting corridor, darting ahead, standing frozen to wait for his sibling. Flipsides looked up at Soundwave’s waiting regard, as the serpent-frame flowed out from under his small hands without comment. His bond with Amplitude was so new it still ached sometimes, was sensitive with that newness. It made every transmission through the sparkbond seem too loud, too reverberating, sometimes unclear. This carrier’s field was, in comparison, as still as a pool of mercury, each ripple distinctive across it. Restful, in a way.

The flightframes and Ravage kept a steady transmission stream flowing to their carrier, so that Soundwave could see everything they saw, sense every current of air and mote of falling rust. The tunnel looped and snaked its way deep, finally ending in a rough pile of hastily-cut iron slabbing. The flyers wormed their way to the top, peered out.

The chamber was much as the other symbionts had described. The large hollow clung to the edge of a cliff -- probably a high one, given the muted reddish light that filtered up. A crudely-crafted, narrow walkway curved over the abyss, towards the purple gleam of an active energy lift. Two mechs, big and armed, stood just on the other side of the slabpile. Another stood staring down at a bound heap of metal, which lay curled on the floor. The broken mech’s armor was so badly scored, it was difficult to tell what color it had originally been.

Laserbeak excelled at slipping past the inattentive, but these two mechs seemed like nothing so much as statues, keeping optics carefully trained on the passageway. _//Soundwave. Can you win us a distraction?//_

\--

Back in the main tunnel, Soundwave and the two other remaining symbionts had moved as close as they dared, given his larger size, and settled several turns back from where the tunnel mouth ended at the piled slabs of iron. Patient and still in the darkness, Soundwave had damped his own EM field as much as possible, shutting down all unnecessary systems. Spreading sensory panels as far as possible in the confined space, he listened: for incautious chatter or encrypted transmissions, as well as his own cohort’s progress. _//Soundwave: acknowledges.//_ He switched channels, opening another to Flipsides. _//Flipsides: attempt contact with Amplitude.//_

Crouched in the lee of Soundwave’s much-larger frame, Flipsides nodded, faceplates set and determined. _//Yes, sir.//_ Pushing outside input far down in his processing queues, he focused in on the bond with his carrier, the subdued vibrations of pain and grief and fear that Amplitude couldn’t conceal entirely. Attenuated as it was, he wasn’t even sure if his carrier was truly online or not. Ultimately, it didn’t matter. He had to try.

 _//Master.//_  Flipsides reached out, feeling the jagged newness of their connection, and cringing at how weak it was. Pyrite would have been a much better choice for this, he knew. _//Master. It’s Flipsides--we are here. We found help. Can you hear me? Master ...//_

 _// … ?//_ The response was fuzzed with static and inchoate glyphs, but it was unmistakably a question. Flipsides wanted to cheer--Amplitude was awake!

 _//Master--we are trying to find a way to you. We need a distraction. Can you make a noise? Anything?//_ He did his best to push over images of what they needed--a mech banging on the floor, another thrashing in his bonds. He tried carefully not to think about how the guards might retaliate to such an annoyance.

 _// ...Flipsides.//_ Amplitude’s end of the channel was hazy, wavering, but his relief was unmistakable. _//Safe? Don’t come.//_

 _//I’m safe, Master, we all are.//_ Flipsides tried not to fret--what if Amplitude was too damaged to understand what was being asked of him? Or worse, to ever recover? _//We found help--another carrier. His name is Soundwave. He has *Ravage* with him, Master.//_ Flipsides couldn’t help but be impressed; there wasn’t a symbiont on Cybertron or off who didn’t know that legendary name! _//They are going to help us get to you. But we need a distraction. Can you make some noise?//_

_// ...will try. Be safe ...//_

_//We will.//_ What Amplitude didn’t know wouldn’t hurt him, Flipsides reasoned. _//We’re here--we won’t leave you.//_

The mechkin shivered a little as he felt Amplitude firmly, deliberately, close off his side of the bond, muting the signals from it. They were close enough here that Flipsides could just detect sounds from the main chamber, when he turned the gain on his receivers all the way up. He quickly wished he had not. Flipsides flinched at the sudden burst of distant shouting, clanging, the metal squeal of something being dragged across the rusted iron floor.

The new carrier shifted position a little, and Flipsides found that Soundwave’s wrist was close enough to lean against. The big plates of armor there felt cool in the heat of the mine.

Soundwave watched through his flyers’ optics as they darted into the big cavern, dodging around stalactites of rust, slipping unseen along cracks in the ceiling. They ignored the wounded mech and his alert guards, circling instead towards the drop off.

Amplitude was confined in a cove of sorts, separated from the rest of the hollowed-out space by the vertical chasm. Only one narrow walkway crossed the gash, making the cove a convenient prison. On the other side, the stacked rings of an energy lift glowed with activity -- the flyers watched as three strong mechs guided a heavy pallet car down from the lift platform. It was heavily loaded, stacked high with unmarked aluminum storage crates. Another two armored groundframes stood guard on either side of the lift entrance; one checked the credentials of the three newcomers, then waved them through to a larger cavern.

Buzzsaw and Laserbeak exchanged looks. Eight total enemies was... not good.

Slightly smaller and darker in color than Buzzsaw, Laserbeak launched himself, gliding silently along an overhead fissure to follow behind the three mechs and their heavily-laden pallet car. The hallway was short and well-traveled, cutting back only a few mechanometers before it opened up ... this time, into a vast natural cavern. The space was surely a full quarter-filum across, and a third that high. Laserbeak glided quietly up into the sheltering darkness, finding a perch, and watched as the three groundframes set about unloading their pallet car with the tired air of mecha near the end of their shifts. Strong though they were, it took two mechs to shift each storage cube.

Fully half the cavern was stacked ten deep in crates.

Ratbat hissed as he shared in Laserbeak’s discovery. _//That … is definitely enough energon to be worth killing over,//_ he sent. A quick estimate of the stockpile, assuming all the cubes held more or less the same amount, told him there was enough energon there to fuel the entire district--empties included--for almost a full half-vorn. Or even longer, if they rationed it. The sheer scale of the bounty spread before them made his intakes ache. Just think of what they could do with that much energon! They could fill their tanks to satiation and more, use it to bribe their way anywhere, or to trade for anything that they wanted … the possibilities were endless.

Soundwave nodded. _//Objective: Amplitude,//_ he said, a quiet reminder. The energon was a potent temptation; but they couldn’t let greed compromise what they came for. _//Reducing numbers, imperative. Working mecha will return to surface when unloading complete; possible to lure guards up with them. Alternate access also required, if elevator is sabotaged.//_

 _//There is a back way into the cavern, beyond the lift,//_ Ravage put in, sending Soundwave a three-dimensional map of the tunnels he had found. _//Large enough for you to enter, and for both you and Amplitude to leave, with some maneuvering.//_ It was a large fissure more than an actual tunnel, concealed by upthrust spikes of alloyed metal. It would be a tight squeeze for both carriers, but doable, as long as they didn’t mind losing some surface chromophores in the process. _//Or we could escape through the tunnels, back up into the mine?//_

Soundwave considered their options. The mine was an obvious exit--but they didn’t know who the overseer might have alerted. And the powerful mecha who protected this trove were obviously aware of the security risks the mine posed, as evidenced by the orders given to Landfill; they could very well be waiting when Soundwave and the others emerged. _//Options, under consideration,//_ he sent. _//Continue exploration, search for alternate routes.//_

The symbionts pinged back their confirmation, and continued their explorations. The astroseconds seemed caught in tar, crawling by, stretching reluctantly into breems. Laserbeak watched intently as the three mecha at last finished unloading their pallet, sharp optics lingering over each glyph engraved on the storage cubes, committing them to fathomless memory. The three groundframes stretched their servos, complaining bitterly over poorly encrypted comm channels. One took a seat on the pallet car, pulling several rust sticks out of his subspace. Another passed around a small cube of murky pinkish energon.

They had, Laserbeak realized, no idea at all what they were storing. He wondered if they would care, if they did. Amplitude’s torment at the hands of the guards, after all, didn’t appear to bother them.

A contact ping filtered over the narrow Chronicler bandwidth. _//We have reached the exterior of the lifts. They didn’t seal the shaft before sinking the elevator through these caverns. Pyrite is cutting access to the lift casing.//_ Bainite’s sending was fierce with his quick-burning delight, crackling with distance and the interference of thousands of mechanotons of iron between himself and Soundwave.

Cybertron had seen little warfare directly. The very environment was hostile to Tr!klcctch, and as a result, there had been little reason to worry about war-related sabotage. And the warframe architects and construction mecha, accustomed to building with security foremost in mind, were rarely privileged enough--or required--to build *here*, in such a low-value civilian district. Precious little of Cybertron’s infrastructure, in truth, was built to battle standards. It didn’t have to be. Thus, the unsealed elevator shafts.

Below Laserbeak, the three load-bearing mechs stood reluctantly and started to power their lumbering craft back up, readying it for another trip to the lift.

 _//Casing’s free. Scrap. They build these things tight nowdays...//_ Bainite seemed to be enjoying himself immensely, jointed legs and long, limber body slipping up into the finely tuned mechanisms that powered the lift. Soundwave could hear Pyrite’s admonishment distantly over the same wavelength. _//I have a command node. Should I rip it out?//_ The foxframe rubbed his mandibles together, acidic toxin already gathering.

 _//Negative. Elevator must remain functional until guards have left--wait for our signal.//_ Soundwave redirected his attention to Pyrite. _//Query: any possibility of triggering intrusion alarm, other distress signal? Ideal outcome: elevator guards returning to surface with worker mecha to investigate.//_

 _//Not sure ...//_ Pyrite’s answer was distracted, accompanied by flickers of images too fragmented outside of a cohort bond to make sense. The razorsnake was apparently moving further upward, beyond the elevator shaft. _//For something like this, alarms seem likely. But where would they put … aha.//_ His satisfaction colored his sending as Pyrite continued. _//Soundwave, we have motion sensors--currently disabled, likely due to the active workers--a few more guard mecha, and one perfect distraction, made to order: a manually activated intrusion alarm. I’ve seen this model before. It appears to be a silent comm signal; probably meant to alert the guards down below to trouble on the surface. The alarm activation panel is out in the open, and I can’t reach it without being seen, but give me a couple breems, and I can slice a few wires and short it out.//_

_//Buzzsaw. Amplitude and guards in main cavern: current status, positioning?//_

Buzzsaw twisted his head on sinuous neck, giving Soundwave the view he needed. All three had been disturbed by Amplitude’s momentary resistance. One guard still paced in front of the slabpile, dutifully keeping the lookout for any attempted cassette infiltration. The other two stood arguing over the carrier’s insensate body. One of them gave Amplitude a desultory kick.

“--nah, little slaggers probably slagged off. We had him screaming for joors, and they didn’t come but the once.”

“Huh. Hear that, obsolete?” The other big grounder knelt beside the carrier, poking at his throat, where the vocalizer should have been. “They got themselves eaten by scraplets in the mines.” The big mech looked up. “Don’t think we’re going to get ‘im to scream again, if that’s what you’re thinking.”

“Yeah. Look, shift’s gonna change in a couple joor. You wanna explain this whole mess to our replacements?” The two mecha looked at each other. Then the first glanced to the nearby chasm. With a shrug, the second guard leaned down to unlock Amplitude’s bindings.

 _//Boss... I think they might kill Amplitude soon,//_ Buzzsaw returned.

 _//Acknowledged.//_ Soundwave refocused his attention on the visual feed from Laserbeak. The workers had apparently lingered as long as they thought they could get away with; they and the empty pallet car were moving in a desultory fashion towards the lift. The visuals shifted as Laserbeak glided along the ceiling behind them, the lift itself coming back into view.

Soundwave shifted, folding panels back down as he began to move towards the slab pile. _//Laserbeak, Buzzsaw: position for attack from rear on carrier guards. Ravage: position yourself for same. Pyrite: sabotage alarm on signal--you will have less than a breem to get into position. Bainite: stand ready to disable elevator.//_ It was easy to handle both symbiont surveillance feeds and acknowledgment pings as well as his own sensor data; moving silently in the tight confines of the tunnel, however, was proving to be more of a challenge. _//Ratbat, Flipside: remain to the rear, watch for the unexpected. Flipsides, Amplitude’s status?//_

The mechkin paused, obviously concentrating, then shook his helm. _//The bond is still there, but--he’s not responding, sir. I think he might be in stasis.//_

 _//Acknowledged.//_ Amplitude not being able to walk out under his own power was an extra complication that they really didn’t need … but there was little to be done about it now. The workers had reached the lift, and were maneuvering the pallet inside. Soundwave waited, watching, until they were almost in position … then sent the signal.

_//Pyrite: now.//_

\---

“So then I tell him, I sez, look, you wanna make everyone but you take double shifts?”

“That slagger,” Skidbreak laughed, shoving the pallet car along. Thing always froze up when you tried to change grades, though Skidbreak would be slagged if he knew why. “Should’a told him to jam it up his tailpipe.”

“Yeah, yeah I should’a. Wait, so what, we got one more load now?”

“Nah,” Skidbreak said, “two, or sumthin’. Got a whole pile of this scrap this cycle. Did’ja see them Kaon loadhaulers come in? Emirate Xeon’s brand right on ‘em.”

The other two hauler-mechs laughed, at last managing to wedge the pallet transport into the elevator. “Like we been anywhere ‘cept here,” said the first. “Nah, you the one always watching scrap, goin’ where you not supposed ta be. Gonna get yer transformation cog wedged up yer aft, one of these days.”

Skidbreak snorted; it was a familiar argument. “Better that than...” Huh. He squinted at the glyphs above the closing door. He knew the first four, all right. But he’d never seen that last one. Blinking. In red. “Whut the frag is a... ‘class one internal security breach’, anyway?” Seemed kinda repetitive to him. If security was breached, didn’t that mean something was inside? Breach... internal. Huh.

“What?” The guards, standing just outside the doors, startled. One snapped around, shoving a fist in the closing door aperture. The hatch bleeped, irised back open.

The guards’ civilian enforcer brands were bright and new, their armor burnished. The weapons they carried were as long and thick as their heavily armored arms -- not something Skidbreak ever wanted to get on the wrong end of. One guard touched his helm, trying to activate his high-gain comm nodes; useless down here, as Skidbreak knew all too well. The other started shoving his way into the tight confines of the lift. “What do you mean, a -- class one... *Primus*.”

Skidbreak found himself shoved up against the wall of the energy lift, an enormous armor-clad elbow smashed into his faceplates as both the guards attempted to squeeze themselves onto the lift. An ozone stink swamped his chemoreceptors as both guards began powering up their weapons. “Whut the-- wait, slaggit, you can’t -- oomph! The lift ain’t meant for so many --”

“Oh really?” Snarled a guard, and Skidbreak found himself on the very same wrong end of an arm cannon he’d hoped to avoid. “In that case, let me do you a favor...” A big set of talons wrapped around Skidbreak’s helm. Skidbreak screeched metallically as the guard picked him up, tossed him out the doorhatch with terrible strength, while the other two hauler-mecha looked on with wide optics.

Skidbreak hit the iron floor with a great crash, certain that all his backstruts were ruptured. “Whu -- wait!” The door irised closed, and the lift began to ascend rapidly. Skidbreak sat up, clutching his dented helm, looking around to the empty chamber. The other three guards across the way, the ones with the prisoner that Skidbreak really, really didn’t want to know *anything* about, stared at him.

“Uhm. Hi,” said Skidbreak. One of the guards started across the walkway towards him. Scrap. This duty shift was fragging horrible. There was no fragging way things could get worse.

Then they did.

The air itself seemed to bow outwards, a ripple, a pulse. Something fluttered near the ceiling, swift silver streaks taking shelter behind dangling stalactites of rust. Fine metal dust on the ground began to levitate, lifted up by a gathering frequency, still too low for Skidbreak’s audials to pick up. The reflected tone made the very walls seem to tremble, an echoing reverberation, a wave that flooded the entire cavern. The mech on the walkway froze, half-turned, confused and undecided.

Then the tone rocketed up, and the whole chamber shuddered, rang like a bell. Skidbreak couldn’t even hear himself scream as he clapped hands over his audials to try to protect them. The thin component wafers of his optics vibrated so hard, the world seemed to blur. Rust and chunks of iron rained down from the ceiling; the shockwave lifted him off his knees and slammed him down once more. And he wasn’t even getting the worst of it.

The sonic attack, focused on the small group around Amplitude, vibrated against armor, knocking gyros askew as the sound twisted, distorting and oscillating as it echoed from cavern walls, the floor, the ceiling, all of it ringing, adding to the cacaphonic *landslide* of sound until it was impossible determine the source. Amplitude, offline and oblivious to the sensory input, lay unmoving, unaffected. His guards weren’t nearly so fortunate; they were knocked off their feet by the onslaught, clamping hands to their primary audials in a futile attempt to block out the noise as vibrations tore at unprepared mechanisms, shattered delicate components in their optics and induced errors in core processors and sensory arrays. The guard crossing the makeshift bridge to the main cavern staggered, arms flailing as his gyros were knocked off-kilter. One pede slipped, dropped into empty space--and the rest of the mech followed, his carry-weapon falling into the fissure’s depths as he slipped off the narrow walkway. Only a desperate, last minute grab for the metal’s edge saved the guard from the same fate, and he clung to the vibrating metal of the bridge, waves of sound beating against his helm.

___

 

The sonic attack reached its crescendo, and Soundwave made his move, lunging foward from his position behind the slab-pile. The iron slabs, already vibrating out of position, teetered and fell as he slammed an armored shoulder against the makeshift barrier, and Soundwave charged forward across the open space, uncoiling primary cables as he went.

Even off-balance and taken by surprise, it was impossible to miss the sudden appearance of a large silver-and-blue mech. Proximity alerts and battle-protocols flared into life, the weapons triggering over to ready-hot even as the guards stumbled, trying to orient themselves as targeting returned error after error, refusing to lock. The first few shots were wild, and low-powered--they had been expecting small cassettes, not a fully-armored and enraged carrier!--and the few that hit did nothing to slow Soundwave down, scorching the surface of his armor and nothing more. Another few steps, and a primary cable lashed out like a whip, the razored blades lopping off the end of the nearest weapon--two strides more, and Soundwave was in their midst, using talons and cables alike to rip apart plating, spear energon-rifles, immobilize limbs. Even had Soundwave been inclined to show mercy, Amplitude’s battered and broken frame was evidence enough that these mecha deserved no chance at all to do the same to him.

The glowing edges of energon blades scored Soundwave’s armor, biting deep. Damage alerts flared to the fore, only to be shunted aside by battle protocols as Soundwave coldly picked his targets. The nearer guard was still reeling from his sonic attack, audials and optics almost completely blown, his attempts to defend himself flailing and wild. The second, however, had already recovered and transformed one arm into a two-sided energon blade to slice at Soundwave’s cables, his faceplates twisted into a snarl.

The greater threat was obvious, and Soundwave closed in, putting on a burst of speed to get inside the mech’s guard. Even so, he wasn’t quite fast enough; the white-hot edge of the second guard’s energon blade tore deep into one of his primaries, past the armor and into the heavy cabling beneath in a hot wash of agony. Soundwave rerouted his cry of pain, stifling it, and slammed taloned hands into the vulnerable seams of the guard-mech’s armor, spearing deep and tearing at vulnerable struts, unprotected wiring. If these had been warframes, such an attack would have been difficult, if not impossible; but even upgraded civilian armor still had gaps, openings between the plated limbs and chassis that could be exploited by the knowledgeable.

Both of the still mobile guards were now fully engaged, with the third still trying to pull himself back up to safe footing. It was time for the second stage of his plan.

_//Laserbeak, Buzzsaw, Ravage: attack.//_

Already circling, watching for openings, the three symbionts responded as swiftly as thought, their bodies extensions of their Master’s fury. The two flyers darted for the first staggering guard, his howls of anguish audible over even the lingering reverberations of Soundwave’s sonic attack. Impossibly agile, they wheeled under flailing limbs and swinging energon blades, powering up their own small lasers.

Fired against armor, the flyers’ obsolete little weapons would do next to nothing. Fired into optics, into coolant ports, tensor cable joints, motor relays, hidden hinges... they were devastating. Screaming now, the civilian mech thrashed at his half-sensed tormentors, every twist leaving some tender new system wide open. A few more shots, and a whole great sheet of his chest armor came loose from its blasted hinges, clanging to the rusted ground. The exposed cluster of thin white sensory cilia, their shielding torn away, flinched back from the hot air -- then blackened as Laserbeak strafed those open internals.

The guard’s shrill wail as he fell knifed through the chaos of battle.

Optics cruelly gleaming, Buzzsaw undulated, twisted himself through an impossible arc midair, streaked down, dodging grasping fingers. His talons cut crumbling black pockmarks into the guard’s processor relays. The flightframe snaked his bladed neck inside, crushing components, beak sharper than any razor carving,*hacking* at the deepest parts of the unfortunate mech. His serrated beak scraped over spark chamber, closed over fuel pump -- and then a flailing fist caught him broadside, wrenching him out of the mech’s body with a shower of tiny internal parts. The guard’s energon blade clipped him as he tumbled, neatly severing the tips of his two longest flightplates.

Laserbeak wheeled, out of reach, firing again and again into the wound his brother had carved.

Across the cavern, Ravage had joined his Master. The speed of the battle between the two large mechs, the weapons-fire and snapping, writhing network of bladed cables was no deterrant as the bladeframe streaked forward, a lightning fast lunge of teeth and blades, coiling and leaping on the second guard’s backplates. His bladed maw fastened around the back of the mech’s cervical cables, tearing at them with a savage twist of his head. His back talons scrabbled, carving great rents in the guard’s armor, then caught the edge of a plate, hooking deep and tearing it free with one great heave.

The guard roared in pain, backstruts arching at the attack from behind. He pushed himself away from Soundwave, twisting to bring his blade to bear on his new tormentor. Ravage leaped free, limbs and armor shifting with the movement to coil and twist impossibly fast, turning to fire his sideguns into the open wound. The energon blasts exploded against the guard’s unprotected internals, blowing his thorax open in gouts of fire and sparking shorted circuits. The guard screamed, metal-edged and raw, stumbling backwards--only to be caught by cables, lashing around his limbs, slicing off the housing for the blade, snapping taut. They seemed to be everywhere, inescapable, the clawed ends tearing at the ragged edges of broken armor plating, peeling him open …

… and then a taloned silver hand slammed home, ripping open the struggling mech’s spark chamber in one final, swift stroke.

The first guard was still alive, but just barely. Primitive battle protocols kept him fighting, firing blindly even as he writhed under the flightframes’ attacks. Buzzsaw had fallen away, keening in pain and one wing trailing smoke, but managed to right himself and achieve the air once again. Laserbeak kept up his lightning-fast attacks, diving in again and again to distract the mech from his wounded brother. A lucky shot blew out a power relay, and Buzzsaw saw his opening. Screeching in savage victory, he launched another attack, strafing that exposed lasercore. There was no chance of a miss; connections melted, slagged into uselessness, conduits severed. The mech seized, thrashed, blasting wildly at his attackers and the air in equal measure--then collapsed, cascading systems failures from the damage forcing him offline.

The third mech, frantically pulling himself back over the edge of the bridge, scrambled upwards and transformed his forelimbs into energon stingers, taking aim and firing in the same instant. He didn’t know where all these damnable mini-mecha had come from or why, but it was obvious who was the real threat; and Soundwave reeled as the shots slammed into his armor, sending him staggering backwards. These were no glancing blows. Well-aimed and designed to penetrate armor, the guard’s fire slagged holes in the layered alloy, tearing edges off of the heavy plates of his chassis and severing the tips of two secondary cables.

Their carrier’s agony was a shock through the bond -- not disabling, but the very fact that Soundwave had not been able to mute the bleedover brought every one of his symbionts wheeling around. The distance was but two great leaping strides for Ravage -- he covered them in a clock cycle, every tensor of his frame humming with whiplash speed. He dodged between the white-hot stingers, leaped straight up into the guard’s face, tearing like a mad thing at optics, faceplates, throat cables. Yellow faceplates gouged away under his frenzy, a single kick disengaged the guard’s vocalizer.

With a crackling, primitive mechanical cry, the guard tore at Ravage, slicing the thin plating of his own palms open on the bladeframe’s knife-jagged hide. One primary optic gored free, the other spitting sparks and hanging, the guard ripped Ravage away, flinging the bladeframe aside. He leveled his weapons even as Soundwave struggled to stand... and took both flightframes’ lasers in his already shattered faceplates.

Spitting static and sparks, the guard staggered back, lashing at the lightning-fast weave of the flightframes. More shots went wild, blasting chunks of rough-cast iron free to tumble down in a deadly rain. The flyers darted away, Buzzsaw collecting a bad dent when he couldn’t turn fast enough. Targeting by reflex alone, the yellow guard locked onto Soundwave. The big mech was too much living metal, had too large a field to miss at this distance.

The guard never saw the small, battered scrap that fluttered on half-active antigrav nodes to land awkwardly in front of its Master. But he felt it when the tiny symbiont unleashed the sonic charge it’d been building for the past breem.

Ratbat’s sonic pulse was far less powerful than Soundwave’s, was a targeted cone rather than a massive field. But in this confined space, with the atmosphere dense around them, the charged wave bore stunning force. The guard stumbled, howling silent pain -- and Ravage hit him once more, a full-body blow that flung both mechs back...

...over the lip of the abyss.


	6. Chapter 6

A harsh cry of denial ripped itself from Soundwave’s vocalizer, even as he threw himself forward, primary cables whipping outward, stretching--and making contact. The pain of Ravage’s bladed jaws closing over the armor sheathing one cable was nothing next to his relief. He lifted, sending other primaries to coil and pull his burden safely upward, lifting Ravage back over the edge and to the ground once more. Then he allowed himself a brief, self-indulgent moment of incandescent thankfulness, his frame slack and prone against the rusted iron of the cavern floor.

Untangling himself from a slack cable, Ravage padded to his Master’s helm, and quietly brushed the side of his muzzle against Soundwave’s upswept audial fin.

 _//...Boss?//_ came Buzzsaw’s worried inquiry, the flightframe wobbling into a landing and hopping close. Soundwave acknowledged it with a wordless reply, an echo of _relief/victory_ ; then pushed himself upwards. They had survived this far; but they had yet to achieve their objective. Less than three kliks had passed since Soundwave had begun his attack, though in the frantic flurry of battle they had seemed like joors. He reached out to Pyrite and Bainite.

_//Query: have guards reached surface?//_

Packed tightly into the maintenance sheathing of the energy lift, the turbofox lay in wait. _//Almost....//_ Bainite returned, all four jaw-mandibles snapping, droplets of venom gathering. Every one of his jointed legs tensed. Then came the signal from Pyrite. And the inside of the cable-choked little gap went absolutely mad.

 

\--

 

Crammed into the elevator, the guards tried again and again to reestablish contact with the surface as the lift rose rapidly, ignoring the sidelong looks by the smaller loadhauler mecha. Transmissions didn’t go far through the solid iron skin of Cybertron. One guard’s external audial crackled at last, receiving some fractured version of a response from above. “Wh... _ppsssht_... fragging... _*click*_... the Pit do you thi... _awkksssst_!”

“Come in, base! Base, do you read? We’re bringing reinforcements. Can you hold out for another klik?”

There were a few moments of garbled nonsense. At last, a phrase came through: “Repeat. _Psssht_... no emergency here!... _awwwk *snap*_ ”

Just then, with a great exhausted groan of ruptured relays, the elevator lost power. The inside went black, lit only by the glow of four startled pair of optics.

Silence reigned, save for the muffled crackle of the comm.

“Huh.” Said one of the loadhaulers, thoughtfully. “Guess you’re really slagged now.”

 

\--

 

Pyrite relayed the turbofox’s success to Soundwave, then with a hissing sigh, went to retrieve his cohort-sibling. The turbofox did tend to revel in destruction a little overmuch.

 

\--

 

Behind Soundwave, the little mechkin scrambled his way over the blasted pile of iron scraps, dashing for his carrier. “Master!” he skidded to a halt beside Amplitude’s limp frame, aghast. He’d seen surgery wounds aplenty, of course, but this... all those deliberate, slow gouges... Flipsides rebooted his optics. Then he set to work with the little tube of nanite gel and roll of metal mesh, patently inadequate though the small tools were.

Laserbeak glided down to land beside Buzzsaw, watching with wide optics as Soundwave pushed himself slowly to his pedes. The bond was thoroughly masked, but his carrier’s wounds were obvious... and distressing to the very spark of him. Those terrible burns.... The flightframe hissed his unease. _//Let me kill the other one, that there might be no witnesses,//_ he offered.

Hop-jumping as best he was able, Ratbat went to find the severed tip of one of Soundwave’s data cables. He caught the still-twitching multitool fitting in his small jaws, and brought it back to lay at his Master’s feet. _//Or blind him now,//_ he added, heading back for the other. Both were equally efficient; the latter might be quicker, but somewhat less certain.

Soundwave glanced over at the sole surviving mech. The groundframe still lay where he had fallen, optics spiralled wide, obviously still dazed by the sonic attack and the brief, furious battle that had followed. But he was also very much online, and cognizant enough of his predicament to begin easing backwards once aware of the carrier mech’s attention. Soundwave felt his spark twist in unease. Laserbeak and Ratbat were both correct; leaving this mech alive would put them all in danger. If he identified them to the powerful mecha that had assembled this immense stockpile … it was a risk that Soundwave couldn’t afford to take, not if he wanted to protect his cohort.

And yet … he looked back at the shredded bodies of the guards. He had never killed before. Fought in defense of his symbionts and himself, yes--but never methodically, cold-bloodedly planned to deactivate another mech. He didn’t grieve for the mecha they had killed; after what they had done to Minebreak, and to Amplitude, it was a kinder death than they deserved. But the worker … had done nothing wrong. Soundwave didn’t want to kill him. Didn’t want to become the same as the powerful mecha who saw nothing amiss in letting others starve so that they might profit. Who ordered their enforcers to torture innocent symbionts for nothing more than the crime of bearing witness to what they didn’t want seen.

 _//Negative,//_ he told Laserbeak and Ratbat both. _//Assist Flipsides, Buzzsaw with repairs.//_ He turned to the frantic mechkin.

“Flipsides,” he said aloud, waiting until the symbiont had paused in his frantic efforts. “Fixing minor hurts, unnecessary and inefficient. Begin triage, look for critical injuries, bring Amplitude online if possible.” He could carry the other mech if it came to that, but it would slow them a great deal, and make it impossible for him to maneuver or fight effectively. “Contact Bainite, Pyrite; hurry their return.”

He looked back over at the cringing worker mech. _//Ravage, with me.//_ Pausing only long enough to pick up the severed sections of data cable and subspace them, he headed across the bridge to where the scuffed, battered groundframe sat--stopping as the mech cringed back from him. “State designation,” he said evenly. From this close, he picked out more details. The mech’s armor was faded, and had the marks of old dents and unrepaired welds, his nanite topcoat worn away completely in several places. He did not have the look of a well-fuelled mech, and while he undoubtedly was given an allotment of energon for this work, it was probably only marginally larger than Soundwave’s own.

“Uhm … S-Skidbreak.” the mech replied, watching them both with wary optics.

“Skidbreak: proceed into main storage cavern.” Acutely aware of precious kliks being wasted, Soundwave pointed in the direction he meant. Ravage growled low as an additional incentive, picking up on his Master’s urgency.

“Uhm. Right. Right, I’m, ah, getting up now. Nice, uh... sharp thing.” Skidbreak stood very slowly, trying not to make himself look threatening. The big bladeframe snarled at him anyway. Skidbreak offlined his vocalizer to keep from whimpering. He was not a brave mech; had never volunteered for war. He knew how to move things, and pack things tight, and now he was going to get his spark torn out by a slagging... a slagging *whatever* and its huge slagging chronicler-mech buddy who had just fragging *slagged* a bunch of guards just because he, Skidbreak, couldn’t keep his big mouth shut around the guards. Skidbreak felt sick.

But he obeyed. What other choice did he have? Other than whether to die here, or to die... over there.

Optics downcast, still not able to see quite clearly, Skidbreak shuffled into the cavern of storage cubes, flinching at every sound behind him. His spark sank with every step.

“Open crate.” Soundwave’s tone was flat.

Skidbreak reset his optics. He... somehow doubted that he’d get very far, if he protested that opening the crates was strictly against orders. Like, really, really fragging against orders. “Uhm...” Skidbreak started, then looked again to the bladeframe’s huge teeth. “...Ok.” And he picked up a prybar.

 

\--

 

Back in the other cavern, Flipsides nodded as the carrier departed, taking comfort from Soundwave’s cool, rational orders. The mechkin... knew better, should have known better, than to start on wounds indiscriminately - he had observed surgeries and collated data for many, many vorn. He took a moment to sit back on his heels, to really *look* at the damage before him, while he felt along the bond for the rest of his cohort, summoning them home.

Evidently, Pyrite was still in the process of disengaging Bainite from his frenzy. Most of the internal workings of the lift, from what Flipsides could tell, had been rendered into acid-steaming metal confetti. Which was good, really good, but it didn’t help Flipsides now. “Laserbeak?” the mechkin said, vocalizer catching. “I need to get Amplitude stabilized. Can... can you come hold things in place for me?”

Flipsides more than half-expected the flightframe to refuse. Not only was Laserbeak far more senior than the mechkin, but this wasn’t even his carrier. And a symbiont did not just... just climb up *into* another mech’s carrier. And hold his tubing together so that his own symbiont could solder the connections closed. It just didn’t happen. But Flipsides had to try something.

Both flightframes turned from inspecting Buzzsaw’s wing, and both approached with their curious step-hop gait. Flipsides felt himself shrinking back, only kept himself from flinching by sheer force of will. He’d seen the pair fighting. They could decide that Amplitude was too injured, they could...

Laserbeak bent his bladed neck. “What,” he said levelly, “do we do?”

 

\---

 

Fragging crates had been double-welded, then storage-locked. Skidbreak thought for a moment about pretending he didn’t know all the fragging storage codes -- a mech got to know ‘em pretty well, after enough vorns of moving slag -- but what was the use, really? Even once he entered the code, he had to shove and pry and bust his aft before the top of the slagging storage cube came off. Then there was a thin aluminum layer of insulation, which the big mech told him to tear away -- like the big guy couldn’t do it himself, the slagger -- and a thin iron sheet which Skidbreak also had to also pry up.

A clear pink glow washed over them from within the crate, and Skidbreak froze, the sheet of iron crumpling in his suddenly-numb talons.

_“Primus.”_

Soundwave stood impassively, watching Skidbreak discover the energon. Ravage stood at his side, silent and ready, his slowly-lashing tail the only hint of his impatience. When after a few nanokliks the worker mech still seemed unable to move or speak, mesmerized by the bounty before him, Soundwave decided to take matters into his own talons.

“Energon,” he said, stepping forward and reaching inward to lift out one of the glowing storage cubes--smaller than the packing crate, but still large enough that it required two hands to hold. He lifted it to show to Skidbreak, looked pointedly at the neatly-stacked crates that half-filled the vast cavern. “All of this, energon.” He handed it to Skidbreak, who caught at the cube reflexively, talons curling tight. “Skidbreak, my cohort, others: we starve. Other mecha are tortured, killed. All to hide this away.” Soundwave turned away, picking up another cube and subspacing it.

“Whut the--how did …?” Skidbreak looked down at the cube in his hands. So *much* energon--he could feel his processors locking up just thinking about it. “Are--are you bribin’ me to stay quiet?” he asked the carrier, knowing that couldn’t be it even as he said the words. Not when the big mech could have just tossed him down the fissure like that last guard.

“Negative.” Soundwave subspaced another cube. There was no way to take it all, but with an uncertain future and injured mecha in both Amplitude’s cohort and his own, they would need all the energon they could carry. They’d already committed murder. What was a little theft in comparison? “Soundwave: chronicler, archivist. Disseminates information only. Your actions, your own.” He cracked the seal on a third cube, placing it on the floor, trying not to think about the risk he was taking with all their lives by revealing his identity. _//Ravage, refuel. Quickly--others will need to as well.//_

Skidbreak’s processor threads stalled again. This mech and his mob had broken into a secret cavern, rescued a prisoner and ripped apart three guards in less than five kliks, and-- “Yer … yer a fraggin’ _*librarian*_? Seriously?”

Soundwave slanted him a dirty look. “Soundwave: trained archivist and historian.”

Skidbreak’s optics couldn’t have spiraled any wider. _“Primus.”_ His vocalizer squeaked embarrassingly. A... a fragging data-pusher did this? The universe had to be slagging him. Were there more like him running around? Prime and Protector -- save us from the evil combat historians. Let slip the librarians of war. Pit, no way.

The loadhauler looked down at the cube in his hands. It was a standard, first-press midgrade -- loaded with minerals but highly suitable for further refinement or for drinking as-is. It was better than he’d had in... a long, long time. It was also a full orn’s rations for a mech his size and activity level. And there were sixty-three more in this crate alone, stacked four by four by four. Skidbreak watched the big mech silently subspace cubes, while the sharp and pointy... mob... thingie lowered its muzzle elegantly into the opened cube on the floor.

Skidbreak followed suit and subspaced his ill-gotten prize... and picked up the prybar, to attack a second, and then a third crate with renewed fervor.

It gave him time to think. Primus. When the guards came back -- and they would come back; this was a city’s ransom in energon and you didn’t just leave that lying the Pit around -- they’d kill him. Of that, Skidbreak had no doubt at all. He’d heard some, a little, of what they’d done to that prisoner they’d caught. And granted, those three were fragging aft-headed slag piles, but most of the other guards weren’t much better. And even if he could, would Skidbreak just... go back to moving slag? Helping to hide all this slag away? Walk past empties, still stupidly pleading for work, after every duty shift? Maybe Iacon was preparing for battle, maybe the senate needed this for warframes, for the defense of everybody. But... who the slag did they mean to fuel? The same fragging warframes who staggered the streets now, so long empty and stimmed out on viruses they’d cannibalized their own processors? No.

The lids and insulation-layers of the storage crates peeled up, each revealing another sixty-four cubes of the same first-run midgrade. The big, shadow-dark quadruped had nearly finished his own cube. Thing must’ve been hungry, Skidbreak realized; there couldn’t be all that many reserve tanks in a critter that size. The big mech, Soundwave, drank half a cube and then held out the rest -- the bladeframe took it in its jaws as best it could and headed back the way they’d come, energon sloshing, just as one of the slender flyers glided up. It landed on the edge of the crate, studying Skidbreak with small, glittering optics.

Slowly, Skidbreak broke the seal on a cube, peeled it open, and set it on the corner of the open crate. The flyer paused a moment, looking to its master -- then stepped sideways around the rim of the crate. With a short and very polite-sounding chirr, it dipped its beak into the energon.

Primus. At least they were tame. For whatever that was worth.

Slaggit. The guards wouldn’t just kill him. They’d bring in a special ops hacker, crack his firewalls like a lilleth egg, dig out every scrap of information on the librarian, leave Skidbreak a heap of twitching slag. Maybe that was why Soundwave had given his name -- that way the ops hackers could see he was telling the truth, and then maybe they might leave one tiny corner of the loadhauler’s processor unviolated. Or not. Slaggit! Skidbreak started subspacing cubes with determination, breaking another open to drink now. Might as well get offlined with a full tank.

Primus. A *full* tank! Just the feel of it was almost worth all of this.

“So,” Skidbreak said, between greedy swallows. “You, uh. Got a way out ‘o this slag, ‘istorian?”

Subspacing one last cube, Soundwave gave him an assessing look. “Affirmative.” No need to tell the mech just how flimsy that plan was. Or even what it was. He looked down at the remaining energon, vaguely regretful he couldn’t take any more, but he’d reached his limit on the amount of mass he could subspace. He picked up another cube and drained what he could, topping off his tanks, wishing for a moment he could stop and savor the sensation. But the sense of time passing was beating against his spark with every nanoklik. They needed to be gone before the guards found a way back down; Soundwave had few illusions about how well they would fare against such mecha without the element of surprise on their side.

Taking the remainder of the cube, he headed back to where the others waited, leaving Skidbreak to his own devices. The mech would follow, or not; he would betray Soundwave to the guards, or keep his silence. Soundwave had done all he could; the rest would have to be left to Skidbreak’s own conscience.

Crossing the bridge, he knelt next to where Flipsides was working. Amplitude looked even worse now that Soundwave had a chance to assess him properly. There wasn’t a single piece of plating that didn’t seem to be scored or damaged in some way, and most his sensor arrays and the other less-armored portions of his frame had been slagged, twisted, or otherwise deliberately broken by his tormentors. The carrier wasn’t as badly off as Minebreak had looked at the end, but that was likely only due to Amplitude’s heavier, better armored frame. It was unlikely the carrier-mech would be able to transform--Soundwave only hoped that he would still be able to walk.

“Flipsides: Amplitude’s status?”

The mechkin didn’t look up, his small talons resting tenderly on the battered, energon-streaked armor. “I--I’ve done what I can, I think. His sparkpulse and other systems have stabilized somewhat, and I’ve sealed off all the energon leaks I could find.” In some cases, that sealing had been a brutal affair; soldering or cauterizing lines shut where nanogel and metal-mesh were hopelessly inadequate for the task. Those same lines would have to be cut open again and reattached later--but for now, at least Amplitude’s spark was stable. “I’m sorry, Soundwave--I can’t seem to bring him back online. There are things I know might do it--energon additives, special equipment--but we don’t have them.”

Soundwave considered the situation, setting his cube down next to Flipsides. “Drink,” he told the mechkin, processing their options, their timeframe, searching for an answer. There seemed to be only one possible solution, though Soundwave lacked the necessary information to make it workable. Unless--he looked down at the small red and white mech. “Query: possibility of medical override via hardline? Your medical knowledge, extend to such information?”

 _//We’re less than a klik away, Soundwave,//_ Pyrite interjected, fleeting impressions of speed and scrabbling claws accompanying the words.

_//Acknowledged.//_

Flipsides looked up, startled. His optics went to the squat loadhauler mech, crossing the bridge behind Soundwave, his arms loaded with four more teetering cubes of energon. Primus. There must have been a lot of it in that cave. “I... I think so, sir.” The cube that Soundwave set before him was as tall as his chest. Unwilling to waste time, the mechkin reeled off an emergency tube and fed it carefully through the flexing field of the cube’s walls, pumping energon directly into his near-empty tanks. “But... I don’t know how... how awake he’ll be, or for how long.” Nevermind, of course, that doing this to his own carrier... it just wasn’t right. A carrier hardlined his symbiont. Not the other way around. But Flipsides had transmitted medical codes to other mechs before... would it be that much different, with his own Master? Ratbat hopped a little closer, and Flipsides reflexively turned to help the other symbiont inset his pump tube through the wall of the cube.

“Woah.” Soundwave had been wrong - Skidbreak’s optics could spiral wider. “You brought a _*sparkling*_ here?” A fragging weird one, too.

Flipsides drew himself up crossly. “Not a sparkling,” he said, “A medic.” Sort of. Kind of more of a teaching medic, a clinical instructor. His optics narrowed on the big cubes that the loadhauler carried, flicked to where Ratbat was happily siphoning fuel. It... might work, at that. “Bring one of those down here. Help me link up M... Amplitude’s feeder line.”

“Uhm.” Skidbreak cast a helpless look at the big, silent librarian. A miniature medic, and a mean one too. Primus. He knew all about medics. Those fraggers would slag a mech up if they caught you putting an optic on ‘em the wrong way. Skidbreak was not a mech who figured he’d get anywhere by disobeying orders. “Right.” And he knelt, awkwardly, to do the tiny medic’s bidding.

Flipsides looked up at Soundwave, nervous, as if seeking permission from one who rightly could not give it. At the big mech’s faint nod, he uncoiled his medical hardline, and clicked open Amplitude’s data port. He fed his small connector gingerly into the aperture, feeling for the transmission studs. At last it slotted into place, albeit more loosely than he would have liked, and Flipsides cycled a shuddering vent.

The little mechkin’s firewalls were virtually identical to Amplitude’s, responded to the same seeds and passcodes -- no need for overrides or tunnels. That made things easier. Flipsides felt carefully along to one of the simplest of mechanisms and activated it -- a small pump that would siphon fuel quickly, and directly, into the wounded carrier’s drained tanks.

The pump clicked over, autonomic mechanisms sensing the presence of energon and applying the necessary suction to pull it into the empty tanks. The first cube drained quickly, energon disappearing as fast as the small tube could suction it; Skidbreak pushed forward another without being asked as it emptied, and Flipsides rapidly transferred the line over, monitoring his master’s sparkpulse and energon levels as the glowing liquid was absorbed. Once past minimal reserves, additional supporting systems began to activate, self-repair nanites beginning to replicate as well as work on the damage, secondary and tertiary lines filling with energon and the other fluids Amplitude needed to function.

Amplitude’s tanks were still not full. The small line could uptake only so much energon at once, and carriers were big mechs, designed to have large reserves in order to support their symbionts. But they were well past redline, and Flipsides couldn’t find any other reason to delay. He patted the torn plating in silent apology, knowing that if this worked, he would be waking his master to a great deal of pain.

“I’m--I’m trying the code now,” he told Soundwave, and triggered the stasis-override codes, forcing them past self-preservation protocols and straight into Amplitude’s primary cortex.

The motionless frame jolted, convulsing--Flipsides ducked a flailing limb, and suddenly there were cables holding Amplitude down, Soundwave stepping forward as the other carrier jerked and shook, unfocused optics flickering to life, static hissing from the torn-away vocalizer components. An unencrypted channel opened, Amplitude sending an incoherent series of queries, all of them laced through with scarlet-streaked pain. _//--whatwherewhohurtwhereerrorerror--//_

 _//Amplitude! Amplitude, we’re here, we’re all here, you’re safe ...//_ Pyrite’s sending ran into Bainite’s and Flipsides’ as all three symbionts tried to reassure their master, the two missing symbionts streaking across the cavern to press against the wounded carrier.

Soundwave listened to the frantic flow of information, but made no attempt to interject or interfere. A strange carrier’s voice was not the reassurance Amplitude needed.

 _“Primus!”_ Skidbreak stuck around just long enough to slip the prisoner’s pump tubing into the third big storage cube -- the second was nearly empty and the pump still running -- then scrambled the pit back. He’d heard that some mechs could hack at a distance, could carve their way right into you with drill-bit tips and then... but Skidbreak heard a lot of things, a lot of sparkling horror stories, told by overcharged mecha. If he hadn’t seen it himself, it wasn’t really, yanno, real. But slag, these things were really, really fragging real *now*. And all these mob things runnin’ wild all over the place -- it was enough to drop a glitch mouse into anybody’s processor.

 _Fraggin’ *librarians.*_ See if Skidbreak was every gonna read history again. Well, not that he did anyway, really.

Amplitude’s thrashing began to ease as the carrier placed block after block on his own sensor net damage, regaining control of his own frame, system by system. _//Pyrite! Bainite! F-flipsides?//_ His trembling talons found the serpent’s small, viper-pointed helm and the foxframe’s sleek, noble one, gathering the symbionts closer. He reached for the mechkin as well, paused momentarily as the little red and white symbiont disengaged his medical hardline and carefully latched his Master’s medical interface port closed. Amplitude hesitated, the briefest of nanokliks. Then he swept up and cradled the mechkin close as well, along with the other two, Bainite wriggling like a mad thing.

Soundwave drew back his cables as the other carrier awoke. Amplitude jerked a little as the last manipulator was withdrawn, as if he just only now became aware of Soundwave. He clutched at his symbionts a little tighter, tried to sit up -- vocalizer emitting another hard crackle. _//Who... who are you?//_ his glyphs were laced with static as well, pain still a hot wound through every word.

 _//Designation: Soundwave, archivist and historian.//_ Suppressing a wince as he coiled away both damaged and undamaged cables, Soundwave tipped his head in a brief nod of acknowledgment, carrier to carrier. _//Cohort: Ravage, Laserbeak, Buzzsaw and Ratbat. Here to offer assistance, rescue.//_ Longer explanations would have to wait. _//Your cohort led us here. Our escape into the tunnels before guards return, imperative.//_ He reached out, waiting through Amplitude’s reflexive flinch, before hooking an arm underneath the other mech’s backplates and boosting him up into a fully-sitting position. Every movement was painful, he knew, but they were running out of time.

Bainite hissed at Soundwave as Amplitude hunched over in pain, the remnants of his vocalizer crackling, and Ravage snarled in response, armor bristling. “Peace,” Soundwave commanded, pausing long enough for Amplitude to regain his composure. “Pyrite, Bainite: need to refuel, quickly.”

Even hazed with pain, errors from portions of his frame he didn’t even know he *had* demanding his attention, Amplitude couldn’t help but bristle at the other carrier’s presumption. To order around symbionts not his own …! But his cognitive processes were coming back online, pulling data from unarchived memory, and he had to admit the other mech was right. The sooner they got out of this cavern, the better. _//Listen to him,//_ he sent to them, ruthlessly overriding the need to have his cohort docked and safe inside him. As slagged as he was, that would probably hurt them more than help. _//Flipsides, you too.//_ He reflexively pinged for Minebreak when the little waveframe didn’t respond; then flinched as tagged memory-files surfaced, a sharp spike of grief ripping through the empty, dead space where his fourth symbiont had once been.

Minebreak hadn’t been his for long. But the waveframe had been a superb symbiont, despite having had little choice in the matter -- high in rank, obedient, fast when able to swim, more level-headed than Amplitude’s own chaotic crew. The bond had fully formed; he’d permitted Amplitude to clean out his offlined carrier’s firewalls, and install his own, without hesitation. The waveframe’s memory well had been so gloriously deep....

Trembling a little, Amplitude reached for one of several large, mostly-empty storage cubes around him, tilted and held it at an angle, so that his symbionts might more easily drink the energon inside. Primus, how had Soundwave obtained so much energon? Unless... _//These... they were in -- //_ his cracked optics darted to the energy lift and the cavern beyond. _//How many...?//_ Flipsides dragged another cube to him, so he could hold it at an angle, as the other two symbionts finished the first. Amplitude considered fueling himself for a moment -- but oddly, his tanks were the one part of him *not* pinging him with errors. They seemed to be... almost full. Three empty cubes beside him, and his retracting emergency intake tubing, seemed to suggest the reason for that.

Spread to half extension, now that there was room for them, Soundwave’s panels twitched. The transmission was tinny, a faint crackle, on a band difficult to decipher. It grew measurably louder, even as Soundwave’s subroutines struggled to crack it.

Something was rappelling down the energy lift... and coming fast.

 _//Information later. Guards coming, escape necessary *now*.//_ Soundwave stood, boosting Amplitude on to his pedes without waiting for permission. Heedless of the now-spilled energon, he wrapped two primary cables around the injured carrier’s thorax and began hauling him towards the tunnel entrance, still half-obscured by tumbled slabs of iron. “Guards, on their way down,” he said aloud, mostly for Skidbreak’s benefit. “All: retreat to the tunnel.” Their other exit, the one nearer to the lift, was impossible now--they’d never reach it in time. He opened the channel to Amplitude once again. _//Recommendation: Bainite take out the walkway to slow pursuit.//_

Amplitude nodded, his pedes stumbling as he did his best to keep up with Soundwave’s much faster pace. _//Bainite, go destroy the bridge, quickly!//_

Skidbreak yelped as a flash of silver sped by him, a single streak of fury, red and orange flaming as energon blades powered up along each of those darting legs. Jaws dripping acid that could eat right through a mech, the thing slaggin’ *attacked* the bridge moorings. First the ones on the far side, then even as the walkway fell the foxframe streaked back over and ate through the moorings on *this* side. The entire bridge thundered down into the rift. Fraggin’ pet turbofoxes now, was it? _Pit._ Skidbreak hurried up the scrap pile after the other mechs -- at least they were something this side of normal. Cables excluded.

The loadhauler helped wedge the prisoner -- Amplitude -- through the gap up top, flinching with every muffled crackle from that shattered vocalizer. Most of the little mob... thingies had made it through already, or flowed in afterward. All except for the tiny medic, which was apparently having trouble climbing up the slag heap. It looked way too much like a slagging sparkling. Frag it. Dropping his last purloined energon cube, Skidbreak pushed himself back out the gap, reached down, and grabbed the little thing up awkwardly around its middle. He yanked the little mech upwards, both of them falling back into the tunnel as his pedes slipped--

\--just as the malfunctioning doors of the energy lift blew open in an explosion of fire and shrapnel.


	7. Chapter 7

Skidbreak’s vocalizer stuttered, and he clutched the little mech-thing to his chassis without realizing it, scrambling backwards. It’d been easier to be brave earlier--full tank or not, he didn’t want to die! Another freaky-aft cable whipped out of the darkness and wrapped around a free arm, yanking him to his pedes and down the tunnel.

 _//Move silent--no vocalizations,//_ Soundwave ordered, effortlessly opening an encrypted channel between all the mecha in their motley little group as they limped, ran or flew down the dark, twisting tunnel. There was no chance at all the guards wouldn’t figure out which direction they’d gone--the destroyed bridge would delay them, but it would also tell them where to look. Silence and speed were the only advantages they had now. _//Ravage, Pyrite, Bainite: most familiar with tunnels. Possible exits other than mine entrance?//_

Pacing his master, who was slowed by the burden of other carrier as well as the size of the tunnel, Ravage searched his archived memories, looking through the wealth of data-files he had of every dig, every subterranean exploration of this area. But most were vorns out of date; any possible exit he led them to could just as easily be a dead end, and leave them trapped. _//There are possibilities, yes, but--I cannot be sure they still exist, Master,//_ he replied unhappily. _//The entrances I use are not large enough for full-sized mecha. There are other, older tunnels, but ...//_

The three symbionts exchanged a rapid burst of data, relaying their communications over Soundwave’s encoded wavelength, using him to boost and direct the signal so tightly that anyone even a few mechanometers away could not have overheard them. Then Ravage darted ahead, keeping always just within optical range, as Bainite scurried out of sight in a blur of speed. _//The midlevel mines should link up to the old Nox energon bores, Master. We’ll use that route.//_ It might be better maintained than the natural tunnels and would be useful to maintain airflow in the mines -- no reason to seal it over.

Behind Skidbreak, the tunnel shuddered. He could feel the shockwave rumble up behind him, wondered if the guards had just fragging blown up that scrap pile. He put on as much of a burst of speed as his frametype was capable, catching up to the staggering librarians, the sparkling squeaking quietly in his fist. The big mech practically filled the tunnel all by himself -- dragging the wounded one was just slowing everyone. Skidbreak shoved the meeping little medic at a passing tentacle -- _Primus_ , they were fraggin’ all over the place -- and wedged his own far more compact shoulder under the prisoner’s bulk. _//Let’s go,//_ he said, using the encrypted channel, marvelling at the feel of it -- like shouting down a hallway made out of fragging mirrors. Did enforcers n’ slag get to use ‘cryptions all the time? Slagging awesome.

They scrambled up the narrow passage, the little mob-thingies slipping ahead and between the larger mecha. They hit the driller tunnel in a breem, and Skidbreak dragged Amplitude past a small pile of broken metal pieces when the ex-prisoner would have fallen to his knees, suddenly powerless, vocalizer sparking. Then up into more tunnels, these ones proper mine bores, a tiny bit roomier.

 _//Mercenaries, Soundwave! In the mines!//_ Utter, abject shock filtered distantly through the encrypted link. To the rattle of heavy weapons fire from ahead, Bainite came tearing back down towards his little group.

The symbionts conferred in a flash. _//This way,//_ Ravage directed, darting down a side tunnel.

They ran.

___

 

Soundwave trusted Ravage implicitly. The bladeframe likely knew Cybertron’s subterranean ways better than any other symbiont alive. That fact, however, could not prevent him from despising the blind desperation of their flight. He should have realized what they had been getting into from the moment Barricade had offered his ‘gift’. Should have taken the time to do more research, obtain maps of the tunnels, make observations, lay plans for both entrance and escape.... He, better than most, knew what happened to those who failed to plan for an exit strategy. A retreat could turn into a rout in a nanoklik, with ignominious defeat following soon after … and Soundwave did not think their enemies were interested overmuch in taking prisoners.

Instead he had pushed forward, letting carrier instincts override his misgivings. And while there was no way he could have foreseen the sheer scope of the trouble Amplitude had found, the immediacy of the danger he was about to put them all in, he should have planned for it nonetheless. If any of his cohort died down here … he stopped that processing thread before it could calculate probabilities and outcomes. Blind, unreasoning fear would do nothing to help them now.

They ran, communicating only via comm-channel, the only sounds of their passage the laboring of Amplitude’s damaged systems, the scrape and muted clang of pedes on metal. It was impossible to move silently down here; Ravage and the others might be adapted well for stealth, but the pound of the larger mecha’s pedes seemed horribly loud by comparison. Only the echoing of the tunnels and the many filum of stratified magnetite, copper, layered iron, and other metals pressing in on them from all sides kept their enemies from tracking them by sound alone.

They ran from the broad, well-groomed mining tunnels into the twisting, labyrinthine warren of natural tunnels that snaked even deeper. Here, irregular slabs of metal reached out to scrape at armor edges, trip unwary pedes. There was less metal-dust here, which made them harder to track, easier to move without it clogging intakes. But even with sensor panels tucked tightly in, Soundwave could track the faint transmissions and sounds of their pursuit, the distant shouts and energy-signatures of charged weapons that edged closer with each twist, each turn.

It was easy to lose themselves in the tunnels. Once, Ravage darted ahead to check a possible route out, only to race back with a report of more guards, more mercenaries. With their only exits blocked off, herded further away from any paths that might lead back to the surface, Soundwave was forced to drive his cohort deeper.

Ravage alone kept them moving, kept them ahead their pursuers. The bladeframe warned of ironfalls and chasms, laid down false scraping trails to sow confusion, drawing from millenia worth of experience of this kind of hunt. He kept open a wide channel to his carrier, feeding him data as quickly as the comm could handle -- tracks of twisted tunnels, conditions and observations over vast swaths of time, letting Soundwave calculate the three-dimensional maps and probability matrixes -- for erosion, for rusting, even the projected rates of autophage repair. The things could either close a tunnel or open new ones, given enough time. The patterns of autophage drone activity were frustratingly complex, far beyond the ability of a symbiont to process, let alone with speed. Several times, Soundwave was able to predict a tunnel or a dead end long before Ravage arrived, winning them precious astroseconds.

But, in the end, it was only a matter of time. One tunnel narrowed down to a crawlspace, a long, snaking belly-slide down a deeply-sloped crack, and the way dead-ended, in a hollow too small to stand in and a blank new expanse of autophage wall.

Ravage circled, darting back up the tunnel past Amplitude -- but even before he heard their pursuers, he knew. No time to backtrack, nowhere to go. Digging through his oldest memories, he presented what he could to his Master, every scrap of information on the subterranean spaces that surrounded them. And bristling, he readied his sideguns, snarling noiselessly as he prepared for battle.

Soundwave analysed the data, searching for any weakness, any opening, finding none. They could turn and fight--but every projected outcome resulted in their deaths, whether quickly or slowly. They were outgunned, outnumbered, and trapped. Soundwave scanned the walls, the ceiling, the floor, extending what he could of his sensory panels, analyzing their resonances. Metal, metal, all around them, filums thick--except, perhaps, in one direction. The new wall that trapped them in, courtesy of the autophages’ mindless need to seal over any gap they found … if it was brittle enough, thin enough, then perhaps....

Soundwave could estimate the age of the new metal, but there was no way to know how thick the wall might be, how much it had been reinforced. Still, it was their best chance. Their only chance. With a few swift commands, Soundwave ordered the little loadhauler up beside him, selecting a wall segment. Then, as one, both mecha slammed their shoulders against the barrier. Iron echoed dully, a heavy resounding clang. Then another. And more.

Soundwave ignored the pain as damaged armor fissured, bending where it was already pierced and scorched. Ravage parted his jaws, slinking into position for an ambush, Pyrite and Bainite echoing his movements. The mercenaries’ barked orders, and other terse, clipped commands echoed down the passage, louder, closer. Scree slid down, small metal shards bouncing as big pedes slipped, iron walls scraping on heavy military armor.

The new wall gave way.

Petals of iron and powdered sealant crumbled apart, dumping the wounded archivist and Skidbreak both out... onto a cable. Layered thick with metal dust, corroded by time, it was still unmistakably a silver wire, crusted over with flaking germanium insulation as thick as a mech was tall. Most of Primus’ ancient body was too large for comprehension; the least part of Him was so many filum across that the optic could not make out His individual components. This chamber was vast indeed, so wide that sonic echoes faded into its fathomless distance. But this wire was identifiable, the top of it forming a snaking, curved pathway some twenty mechanometers wide, stretching against and half-melted into one featureless iron wall.

The entire, vast chamber was shuddering.

A half-filum ahead, the wire dead-ended, in.... for a moment, Skidbreak thought the bladed wall was somehow so thick with vermin that it seemed to writhe, to shift. It took him a few astroseconds for his processors to assemble the image correctly.

Slanting up out of the void, pressing itself alongside Primus’ wire and almost as thick, a horror ate methodically at the exposed silver, huge bladed maws grinding, gouging, wearing away. The driller’s main rasping intake took great, slow-pulverising bites, the splitting hydra-head of blades sweeping great chunks of metal into that terrible maw. Each of the thing’s smallest movements as it fed sent a rumble through the chamber... and it wasn’t even stirred to violence. Yet.

Climbing to their pedes, Soundwave and Skidbreak looked at each other in despair. The rest of the symbionts tumbled out after them, only to stop short at the sight. Soundwave turned, heaving Amplitude from his huddled position at the newly-made tunnel mouth and hauling him over the debris.

“We’re fragged--so, so, _*so*_ fragged,” Skidbreak said, breaking their silence for the first time in joors. What did it matter now? Staying quiet wouldn’t make them any less trapped. He took a few steps along the wire, jittering, limbs and armor shifting back and forth as if he wanted to transform and peel out in alt-form--but to where? Even if the driller hadn’t been there, there were probably no openings at the far end of the wire anyway. Their only options were death by mercenaries, death by driller, or by throwing themselves into the fathomless pit that stretched out below. Though he supposed the flying thingies might survive. For a while, at least. _Primus._

If he’d known this was how he’d end up, he never woulda come into work today.

 

___

 

Soundwave could no longer prevent his despair from resonating over the bond. He’d failed them. All of them. The thought that they would all die together was no comfort at all; it was a carrier’s privilege and responsibility to protect his cohort. Even to die, if necessary, to ensure his symbionts survived. But there would be no surviving this, and his grief at the enormity of his failure was impossible to hide. Buzzsaw and Ratbat, perched on his shoulders to spare their injuries, pressed miserably against him, doing their best to offer comfort.

 _//It’s not your fault, Boss,//_ Buzzsaw sent, rubbing his elegant, angled head against Soundwave’s audial fins, as he had so many times in the past. _//You did everything you could.//_

 _//Soundwave: brought us to this,//_ came the immediate reply, Soundwave unable to accept Buzzsaw’s attempt at absolution. _//This course of action, reckless and irresponsible, endangered entire cohort.//_ His great banks of processors warmed, overclocking, cycling data again and again through all the possible scenarios, searching for any way out. Any way at all.

There was none.

 _//We were the ones who wanted to go on,//_ Ratbat countered. _//We knew the risks.//_

_//Responsibility for decision, mine. Risks--//_

_//Master?//_ Laserbeak’s interruption was polite but urgent, his message priority-flagged, pushing past the others. _//Master--I have a crazy idea.//_ The symbiont was clinging to the cavern wall above them, talons sunk into the uneven surface, his flexible neck turned to allow him to watch intently the writhing, heaving mass of the driller.

 _//What kind of idea?//_ Buzzsaw asked, looking up at his class-brother.

_//The driller--in the sagas of the Third Golden Age, the annals of Lord Protector Aegis, it tells of how he rode them to war, using them to tear apart his enemies’ fortresses and their armies. ‘And he delved down into the heart of Cybertron, into the darkness, and was lifted up on the blades and the hunger he found there. He tamed it, and rode the darkness into the light, and none could stand before him, nor any wall bar him from his Prime.’ What if … what if we tried to do the same?//_

Silence for a single astrosecond - an eternity, for mecha. _//You’re right,//_ said Buzzsaw flatly. _//That is crazy.//_

The rattle of small arms fire burst from the tunnel behind them, then a scream, a metal wail of terror as teeth and claws and long knives flowed out of the darkness. Armor crashed against the iron wall, the screams took on a desperate pitch -- and then Ravage and the other two ambush symbionts came flashing out of the darkness. _//The wounded will momentarily clog the....//_ The big bladeform skidded to a halt, talons gouging into the thick wire insulation as he got his first good look at the chamber. At the thing, the vast and tireless maw, gnawing its way along towards them.

He could, perhaps, leap along the plates of the driller’s back, follow it down to wherever its tail ended... but he knew very well how fast and how frighteningly agile these deep dwellers could be when roused. The three flyers could glide down. Bainite might be able to match Ravage’s speed. The others would never survive. Nor, truthfully, would the symbionts -- their deaths in this darkness would simply be slower. _//Master?//_

Soundwave’s helm snapped to Amplitude, even as his armor unfolded. _//Command: dock all symbionts now.//_

A swift, simple command compelled Soundwave’s cohort. Laserbeak, Ratbat, and Ravage folded themselves into cassette form, dragged in by their Master’s magnetic and anti-gravity fields, angling themselves to slot inside as quickly as possible.

 _//We can figh--//_ Buzzsaw started.

 _//*NOW.*//_ Soundwave’s writ afforded no space for dissension. The flightframe joined his cohort, sliding into place a bare nanosecond behind the rest.

Still slumped on the ground, Amplitude bristled, furious. To dare command another carrier and cohort, as if they were -- Flipsides laid a hand on his aching, flayed armor, issuing as he did a primitive symbiont plea, an old and very specialized glyph of entreaty. _//Please, Master?//_

Amplitude’s sheets of armor slid back, bent and battered metal groaning. Even as he gathered his cohort to him, even as he tried to sit up, to make the docking easier, a pair of the big carrier’s primary datacables unlimbered, stretched for him, their cilia already extended. Amplitude recoiled. _//What are you doing?//_

 _//Soundwave: requests datalink with Amplitude.//_ Request … was not quite accurate; Soundwave’s message was laden with urgency, with the highest-priority modifiers possible, of their imminent death if the receiver did not comply. He had never before been reduced to begging for a datalink from anyone--but he did so now without reservation. _//The driller, our only possibility for survival. Pyrite’s foci, cyberbiology and indigenous life. Soundwave: requests/pleads/begs immediate download of all data extant on drillers.//_ Even in the brief astroseconds it took to communicate that request, they could hear the angry shouts of the mercenaries. Stray plasma blasts erupted from the mouth of the tunnel, along with screams; apparently their enemies were not being gentle with their wounded as they dragged them out of the way.

Amplitude’s optics flickered to the writhing mammoth form of the driller, the multiple bladed jaws. / _/You want to--that’s insane. We will all die!//_

 _//Our death, inevitable. Driller, only possible weapon left to us.//_ The cables reached further, the clasping mechanisms opened wide at the ends in silent entreaty.

 _// … //_ Armored plates creaked and groaned, but closed over Amplitude’s chassis, sealing his cohort safely within. But that safety was an illusion; and a carrier’s imperatives were clear. Any chance at survival, no matter how infinitesimal, had to be taken. _//Pyrite: prepare for data transfer. Requesting all datafiles and tangential information on driller species, highest priority download.//_ He uncoiled the undamaged pair of his own primary cables, reached out, joined them with Soundwave’s, mechanisms locking them together as he twined his fiberoptic cilia with Soundwave’s own. Within the cavity of his internal dock, a similar connection extended, twining deep into his cassette’s uplink receptors.

The contact between the carriers, once established, was an almost painful jolt; they had no time to establish parameters or protocols, to do the elaborate dance of firewalled data-tunnels from carrier to carrier. Amplitude simply flung the connection wide open, feeling Soundwave do the same. The empty roaring draw of that waiting connection was … intimidating, almost. Amplitude was an experienced carrier, but it was obvious that Soundwave had been designed to handle and transfer an almost unheard-of magnitude of information. The big carrier’s side of the connection was a riptide pull, drawing at their link in open urgency.

 _//Master, the data is ready,//_ Pyrite replied, unquestioningly obedient to his carrier’s command.

The entire exchange took place in a few astroseconds. Data streams spooled up out of the void of the serpentframe’s memory well, each thread pared down to its lightest and most essential. Observational records, the details of vast orn-long vivisections, petabyte after petabyte of neural relay mapping, tensile strength tests of plates and segments, and far, far more. Amplitude spent no time processing any of it, just released the threads to the other carrier. It was like trailing ribbons into a hurricane, scraps of information just sucked free, torn from his grip, vanished without a trace into that illimitable riptide. Amplitude’s compromised systems crackled with the strain, scrambling not to drop bits as he directed more simultaneous threads than he’d ever attempted before.

The link took everything Amplitude had, everything he could summon -- commanded more. His symbionts could feel it as well, Pyrite especially,  that draw even through the filter of his carrier’s relays. All of them knew it when Soundwave found enough, found what he needed. The link cut out with a microsecond’s warning, leaving Amplitude scrambling to stem the information tide, overflow dampeners spitting sparks, their buffers flooded past tolerances.

Vaguely, distantly, Amplitude was glad he’d only been offered a pair of connections.

 

\--

 

Beside the two chronicler mecha, Skidbreak barely had time to gape. All the little mob thingies went folding up and flying away almost too fast to follow, and then the librarian and the prisoner, they were doing whaa -- woah, the _Pit?_ That just wasn’t _right._ He knew he shouldn’t have had that second cube, because _Primus_ there must’ve been highgrade or something in it, and what was _wrong_ with mecha today because like couldn’t they get a _berth_ or sumthin’ and then those locking multitool blades were spinning back, fiberoptic tendrils withdrawing as fast as they’d entwined together.

Another fraggin’ cable, a slightly smaller one, shot out way too fast and wrapped around his arm and dragged Skidbreak aside -- just as a volley of plasma fire erupted from the open tunnel mouth. The cable propelled Skidbreak, yelping, in the direction of the stunned-looking prisoner. Ex-prisoner. Soon-to-be-again-prisoner. _//Command: get Amplitude up! Move!//_

Totally not willing to argue with a tentacle, going on sheer momentum and terror and nothing else, Skidbreak grabbed the other mech. He got one shoulder underneath and shoved him upward like he was nothin’ more than dead weight--which he pretty much fraggin’ was -- ignoring the agonized hiss of static from that ruined vocalizer. Get him up *where*, Skidbreak wanted to ask, but they were already running, staggering.... _//Wh-what’re ya--//_

….straight towards the fragging driller. _//Oh no no no PIT no...//_ That tentacle still hadn’t let him go, dragging Amplitude and Skidbreak both into a dead run behind the crazy-aft librarian, plasma bolts searing by their audials.

 _//Driller, only chance,//_ snapped Soundwave to both of them, tersely imperative. _//Pyrite’s data, suggests driller will ignore small objects unless irritated. Skidbreak: will follow my lead, jump onto large plates of driller’s main body and *hold on*. Soundwave: will progress further, attempt to force hardline with main cortical relays. Analysis: Driller will attack tormentor, ignore you.//_

Since when was a whole fraggin’ mech a small object? _//B-but … what if the slaggin’ thing rolls, or crushes us against a wall, or--//_

 _//Then your death, quick and relatively painless.//_ The driller’s open bores loomed before them, impossibly large, serrated circular saws grinding against metal, sparks flying, the noise deafening audials and vibrating down to their struts. The creature’s body coiled below their narrow pathway, a long and undulating series of spiked, overlapping plates and rotating bands. Soundwave increased his speed, running flat out, sensor panels retracted tight and flat against his back; behind him, Skidbreak did the same, the loadhauler’s systems whining hard, optics wide and terrified. There was a break in the cable up ahead--a gash made by the driller in passing. The creature’s body coiled beneath it, rising up like a great monstrous wave.

Soundwave headed for it.

_//Jump! Jump now!//_

They leaped--and landed with a clatter of armor and limbs upon the shifting, rolling plated surface. Skidbreak yelped as the plate he was on tilted, lifting upward. He scrabbled for purchase as he kept sliding, right off the other side and into the black pit of nothing below--and then tentacles lashed out, latching onto plate edges and spines and jerking him to a halt. Shuddering, he looked up. Amplitude gave him a pained nod, his tentacles splayed out, tethering them both to the creature’s back as if they were a particularly unwieldy load.

Hunh. Maybe he wasn’t dead weight after all.

 

\---

 

 _//Stay. Hold ON.//_ Soundwave ordered them, vaulting the gap and darting further down the huge silver wire, closer to that huge and terrible maw. At the place where the driller coiled its vast body up and around the wire, Soundwave jumped as well, his own cables grabbing for purchase as pedes and claws slipped and scored the heavy plates of the driller’s surface. The creature moved continuously, rippling as it chewed. The armored segments of its frame were so large, so heavy, that Soundwave could easily be crushed to death, would lose limbs or worse if he was caught in the ever-shifting gaps between them. Dimly, he sensed the absence of any additional plasma fire--apparently their enemies were unwilling to risk the driller’s ire by firing at it. An unlooked-for stroke of fortune; one he hoped would give him the time he needed.

He flung himself forward, using the rising plates beneath his pedes to launch himself to the next, retracting secondary cables and using primaries to hold and stabilize as he landed, scrabbled for footing, and launched himself again. He had landed close to the front of the driller’s body, if this one was typical of its species. According to the data, the main cortical relays for the thing’s primitive processors would be three to four body-segments behind the creature’s drilling-bores. Immense sensor cilia, fully twice as tall as he was, twitched as he scrabbled past, the armored body beneath his pedes shifting in response--but the driller kept chewing, momentarily oblivious to its newly acquired passengers.

A bladed ring -- five mechanometers in width and banding the whole vast girth of the monster -- ratcheted down, crushing inside it a bite of metal the size of a habitation pod. The whirling, compacting blades of the ring’s exterior caught the edge of Soundwave’s pede armor, and simply sheered it off. Only a mad, leaping scramble, cables lashing and seizing upright blades, saved him from losing the entire foot. A terrible crest rose up before Soundwave, all jagged and broken, a wall of reaching spears, spines, spinning razors -- the edge of the next segment. The worm’s lazy stretch to reach an untouched part of the wire nearly drove that terrible edge against Soundwave, nearly cleaved him in twain.

Then the plate dipped, and Soundwave flung himself forward, pushing his battered, fractured frame beyond all limits. He hit the next sheet of heavy plating, slid as it suddenly tilted down, the great worm bending its maw as it worked its way down through the thickness of its meal. The buzzing, the grinding, the rumble as a constant landslide of chunks and gravel rattled inside, the sheer *noise* of the thing threatened to shudder screws from their sockets, to shake Soundwave’s joints apart. The big carrier caught himself on a blade that nearly cost him two talons, jerked himself to his pedes, stumbled down a murderous staircase of ever-shifting swords -- and a sudden heave slammed him visor-first into a patch of quivering sensory cilia.

The grinding magnified, became a whirring scream. And, like a rising leviathan, the worm _awoke_.

That huge bladed maw whipped around like a thing a fraction of its size, simple sensors latching onto living metal. All around Soundwave, the driller’s five hydra maws reared up, spreading on their great, ring-flexing tubes.

Soundwave threw himself flat, talons and cables alike hooking into the edges of plates, ducking frantically waving cilia as the driller lifted into the air, writhing. Those multiple maws hesitated in midair, momentarily undecided as to the source of its pain. That was apparently too much for the mecha still clustered at the tunnel mouth. They fired, a barrage of plasma bolts searing against sensor cilia, scorching the surface of the driller’s armored form, shouting in incoherent fear as they scrambled backwards. More plasma fire splashed against its armor, and the driller lunged, hydra-maws and a gaping bore-mouth bearing down on the retreating mecha--a serrated, bladed force of nature bent solely on devouring destruction.

Still clinging with grim determination to the driller’s sensory cilia, Soundwave searched, running multiple-phase scans. There had to be interface ports, some manner of opening he could exploit or use to get past the creature’s armor and into its internals. But scan after scan came up negative--the driller’s armor plating was solid, a mechanometer thick, and the shifting, ever-changing gaps between the segments would sever his primary data-cables in an instant if he tried to use one of them for access. Unless--he scanned the sensor cilia that waved furiously above and around him. The cables were massive, and designed for data-input only, but--in a way, they were akin to his own fiberoptic cilia. If he could infiltrate their connection to the driller’s sensory network, piggyback into the main cortex processors....

Such a tactic would never work on a more complicated mechanism. Regardless of frametype, all mecha had layers upon layers of defenses, firewalls, datawalls and guardian protocols, all to prevent just this sort of parasitic hack. But on a creature this primitive, with what Soundwave now knew of its neurological responses... it might just work.

A twisting jerk of the driller’s body flung Soundwave to one side. He grabbed the trunk of another cilia as his frame lifted into the air, then slammed back down with another sickening lurch. Tightening his grip, Soundwave hesitated--then sliced his talons through the thick cable, hacking it off at the base. He untangled a primary cable, whipping it around, clamping it down to the ragged edges of that cord. His own fiberoptic cilia extended, blue-white tendrils wreathing around and against the sparking, leaking conduits.

Soundwave screamed, the sound tearing itself from his vocalizer. The pain of an incompatible connection ripped through his sensor net--the data was *wrong*, was scrambled and incoherent, sending fiery agony through every fiberoptic tendril. His guardian protocols scrambled to reject the flow, to throw up datawalls and disengage. Desperately, Soundwave rerouted the response, blocking it, engaging encryption/translations protocols instead. Trying frantically to convince his own systems that the driller-signals weren’t foreign, weren’t alien and primitive and damaging, but merely a unknown kind of encryption, a new system-language that required analysis, decoding. Accepting the data even as it burned and writhed against his firewalls, Soundwave forced himself to dig deeper, to *understand*.

The driller flung itself again and again at the place the little cluster of mecha had stood, crushing wall, wire, and living metal alike in terrible blows that nearly flung Soundwave from his tenuous place, that rattled things loose inside him. Rearing back, plunging, the worm’s grinding maws destroyed the entire chamber wall, pulverized it. The grinding wail downed out screams as cornered mecha were crushed, razored apart, swallowed down, jettisoned into the abyss -- a few, perhaps, were able to flee back up that narrow crawlspace, but the driller claimed most with terrifying ease.

But the driller’s pain did not stop, and those great hydra heads rose up, waving, blindly seeking. One turned and struck with sickening speed, the edge of it blading through one of the creature’s own sensor cables and a chunk of Soundwave’s thigh plating alike, drillbit teeth breaking against the worm’s own armor and scattering like shrapnel -- and the driller *screamed*. Every edge of its plating rose up, a great indrawn rasp, and then metal shrieked on metal as each razor whet itself against the others in vast shuddering ripples, trying in vain to dislodge the irritant.

When that did not work, the worm began to thrash.

This coil, that lashing ripple; this blindly seeking hydra maw and that spin of vast main bore... Soundwave rerouted everything to that flow of alien code, ignoring the physical pounding, the terrible jolting thudding. As Soundwave sank deeper, a pattern rose up around him, strings of crudely repetitive chains. Every slamming impact of sensory cilia on rough iron walls brought up the same subtle variance of radiating gibberish. Without knowing quite what it was, or even what it would do, Soundwave reached for those lines of code.

There were no firewalls, no datablocks, to stop him, and he bent all of his knowledge of code, all of his vast multi-threaded processing abilities, to mapping those signals. _//-pain-//_ was the first and the easiest to identify, code repeating itself over and over, originating from the creature’s damaged areas, from Soundwave himself. Then _//-fight-//_ and _//-devourdestroytear-//_ , both inextricably intertwined, latched onto the _//-pain-//_ in simple action-response dualities. The driller was a creature of instinct and little more; its only responses to injury were to destroy its tormentor, or--and that gave him the next lines of code, lesser in the priority-strings than _//-fight-//_ but slowly rising--the urge to _//-flee-//_.

Those few base bits of coding were the chink he needed, the cipher to unravel the rest. The driller continued to writhe, tearing at the walls of the cavern and slashing blindly at the air and itself. But Soundwave had his hooks in the creature’s coding now, was following it inevitably to its core programming. Simple, yes, but that simplicity made those directives almost impossible to redirect or alter. There was no way to induce logic-loops, to distract or confuse, not when the driller’s existence was one of _//-hunger-//_ and _//-devour-//_ , of _//-energy-//_ and _//-burrow-//_ and _//-ripgrindtear-//_. Soundwave couldn’t stop them, couldn’t replace the creature’s core directives with his own will--it would be like trying to stop Cybertron from rotating on its axis. But if he couldn’t stop them--perhaps he could use them instead, suborn those instincts, replace sensory signals with false data to direct, to soothe and goad.

He began with _//-pain-//_ , blocking the signals from his own intrusion, from the damage the creature had done to itself. This deeply buried within the creature’s code, he could even feel the minor prickling irritant-data of where Amplitude’s cables still clung to the driller’s plating. He blocked that as well--and the thrashing rippled to a stop, that great devouring maw lifting blindly as if puzzled by the sudden absence of its tormentors. Silence, for a single, long moment. Then the driller bent its head to Primus’ wire once more, and a new batch of code rose up in its primitive queues.

 _//-devourgoodhungerdevour-//_ Soundwave cut away that code, copied it over to the mapped-out periphery of the vast worm’s sensory field, pinned it in place.

The sawing rasping *grinding* buzzed to a halt, and the driller turned, ponderous and placid now, no hint of its whipfury rage remaining. Sensing the leaking, sparking wire -- sweet, running hot with energy, metal warm and delectable -- the creature folded its bladed hydra maws close to its terrible main bore, reached up to a blank portion of smooth wall... and began to drill its way in, anticipating. _//-devourgoodhungerdevour-//_

A few mechanometers at a time, the worm undulated forward, sinking its vastness into layered iron and rust. The shattering vibrations of the tunneling rattled through them. Soundwave flinched low as the driller drew him into its newly-dug passage, gaining speed with every slow-gnawing chunk of metal swallowed. But the tunnel was entirely wide enough for him -- provided he didn’t try to stand up or move too much.

 _//Query: status?//_ Soundwave sent to Amplitude, over the strut-wrenching vibrations.

 _//... still functioning,//_ came the shocked-sounding reply. _//You’re... you’re driving it? You’re *driving* a *driller*?//_

Soundwave permitted himself a smile behind his battlemask. He watched in awe as the smooth-cut edges of deep tunnels and scattered mine shafts opened up above him, slid away to the rear -- the driller just carving through like monofilament through hot metal. With great care, Soundwave teased the lure-input a little higher up, vertically, along the edge of the worm’s sensor field, severing other inputs as they flickered briefly into the driller’s primitive processor-node. Blindly, the creature angled itself towards the surface.

And lifted up on blades and hunger, they rode the darkness into the light.

 


	8. Chapter 8

The driller grew uneasy as they neared the surface. Soundwave could feel it, the cascading flow of warnings, errors, all driving the driller to seek the depths once more. Blades creaked, maw gnashing helplessly for long moments, before the driller crept forward a little at a time. They passed more tunnels now, some even inhabited -- Soundwave caught sight of screaming mecha stumbling back, fleeing, as the worm ate its way through their tunnels. He could not say if any died, lost to the driller’s mindless hunger.

Fighting the worm’s unthinking instincts every length, Soundwave did his best to map out the habitations above, to guide his rebelling vehicle towards the open and uninhabited plains that stretched between Iacon’s great spires.

 

\--

 

On the rim of the slums, the empties were everywhere. Some fell, and lay still, to be slowly disassembled by those still able to crawl and to gnaw. Others simply staggered, dull, their sparks the merest dying glimmers within their frames. But they lived, and they could feel, in their own rudimentary ways. And now...

...now they knew that something was wrong.

Wheedle kicked irritably at one of the empties, jabbing it back with a crackling, crudely pieced-together electrical prod. Slagging pit slaggers, always tryin’ to creep in and make off with some piece of scrap. It was slagging irritating, is what it was. Mech could spend all orn here on the border, scraping together a piece here, a salvage bit there, and the nanoklik yer aft was turned, there go the empties with yer finds. The slagging crawl-bots couldn’t even use the scrap, what did they think....

“Uhm,” said Freeload, reaching out to poke at Wheedle, almost earning himself a jab with the prod as well. “They always do this slag, or what?”

Wheedle worked to focus his optics, half-rusted optical calipers whirring and grinding. The fuzz slowly cleared. Then his optics widened. Every empty on the border, every half-sentient thing that could still drag itself, was shambling towards the market.

And under Wheedle’s pedes, the ground began to tremble.

“What the frag …?”

The trembling increased, until the ground and everything attached to it was vibrating, shaking. Piled stacks of scrap fell over, to the accompaniment of crashing noises and cries from within the slums. Scattered mecha staggered, trying to keep their balance as the metal beneath their pedes shook, retreating hastily backwards as great fissures tore open. A great swath of the open plains first sank, then bulged upward--

\--and then exploded in a hail of iron chunks and sharp-edged shrapnel. The gargantuan bladed maw of a driller burst out of the plain, its saw-toothed bores chewing, devouring everything in its path, wave upon wave of razor-plated, segmented body following, coiling upwards as it writhed, rising impossibly into the air. It hung for a moment, a great shadow of turning blades and saw-edged hunger. Then, with a great heaving arch and a crash that rocketed like thunder in the canyons of Iacon, it fell back upon the surface, turning its blind head towards the scattering, screaming mecha below.

 

\---

 

Soundwave had reached the limits of his control; there was no lure, no false sensory data that could keep the driller out on the surface, not when every bit of coded instinct it had was sending errors, imperatives to retreat from the open air, to return back to safety of the dark, the places where metal pressed in for the devouring. The most he could do was direct it away from the slums, even as it writhed and coiled, hydra-maws weaving in confusion and frustrated _//-hungerwrong!hunger-//._

 _//Driller: won’t remain on surface for long!//_ he sent to the others, echoing it with the data-flickers of the creature’s single-minded determination to return back beneath the surface. _//Skidbreak, Amplitude: jump clear, towards the slums!//_ There was still the chance, even now, that they could be crushed if they jumped too soon or too late, or rolled beneath the creature’s coils as it roiled and churned up the smooth iron surface into jagged spikes of torn metal. Such things would have to be left in the hands of fate, however; Soundwave had done all he could.

The driller arched, writhed, driving its bore-maw downward as it broke back through Cybertron’s crust. Soundwave held on, disengaging from the creature’s coding tendril by tendril until only his own presence was masked, watching metal churn, the torn surface rising towards him …. Then he let go, pushing upward and flinging himself as far as he could in the same moment. For a moment, he was weightless--then he slammed to the ground, rolled, scrambled to his pedes and ran again, ignoring damage-warnings and redlined battle-protocols, running until he was clear, was on smooth, unbroken iron once again, and could finally turn to watch the last of those writhing, whipping tails disappear underneath the surface.

Metaldust and chunks of rust showered down, pattering on fractured armor. Another tremoring heave rocked the slums, sent Soundwave staggering to his kneeplates amidst all the piles of sundered, broken scrap. The vibrations eased as the worm burrowed its way rapidly towards safety. The tunnels it left were irregular gouges into the depths -- one shallowly sloped, the other arrowing almost straight down.

At long last, and the world went mercifully still. For the first time in a joor, Soundwave dared to turn his audials back on, wincing at the static of delicate parts shaken out of alignment. Every portion of the big carrier was battered, dented, scraped. He limped a little, wires sparking under the great severed bites carved out of his armor at pede and thigh. The places he’d been shot were a single fiery ache. Three of his primary datacables were disabled or nearly so, along with several secondaries. His repair mechanisms ran hot, replicating nanites, drawing pieces back together micron by micron.

As the cloud settled, Soundwave tilted his visor back. The narrow strip of filthy sky overhead, the blur of stars, stirred his spark with their beauty. He reached out for his cohort, sliding his armor open. _//Ravage, Laserbeak, Buzzsaw, Ratbat.//_ Twin streaks of silver darted from his chassis, the flyers carving effervescent arcs and whorls in the dusty air, throwing themselves into spirals and helixes. A joor linked to Soundwave’s repair mechanisms had sealed over the tips of Buzzsaw’s flight panels, leaving him only a little wobbly in the air. Ravage paced a slow circle, stretching himself, then sat down quietly beside his Master, spines just brushing Soundwave’s lower leg.

Ratbat had somehow -- in the middle of all the vibrations, the panic and noise -- managed to put himself deep into a recharge cycle, and stirred only slightly as the other symbionts left. Soundwave decided against waking him, and covered the little glideframe over once more.

Soundwave’s hearing began to clear marginally, and he could make out a distant roar. _//Query: status? Amplitude? Skidbreak?//_ A flicker of thought sent the flightframes spiraling higher, above the heaped hillsides of debris and scrap. Two massive piles over, both other mecha were climbing towards the slums and market. The little loadhauler still half-supported the carrier, Skidbreak looking around uncomfortably, Amplitude gesturing them forward with determination. Wings beating hard, Laserbeak powered himself higher. And....

 _//Made it, Soundwave. You might want to stay where you are. Unless I miss my guess, things are about to get hot.//_ Amplitude returned, glyphs thick with anticipation, a fierce kind of destructive delight -- the kind that stripped clean and laid bare.

…and a crowd was forming. Gathering what crude weapons they could, mecha poured from the slums, from the edges of the vast market. Empties staggered vaguely in the same direction, attracted by the activity -- so much movement meant power, meant fuel... might mean droplets to spare to the starving. Several groups of enforcers, distinctive in their black and white, were snaking through the mob, doing nothing at all to deter the growing gathering. Very distantly, a phalanx of guards issued from the mines, shoving their way closer, kicking mecha out of their way.

 _//Mecha of Iacon!//_ There was nothing at all amiss with Amplitude’s broadcasting relays. His transmission swamped the full breadth of the nearby radio bandwidth, cutting across every other nearby communication, audible to every mech with a receiver left in his chassis. One more staggering surge of effort, and Amplitude and Skidbreak reached the top of the scrap pile.

The broadcast came again, and through Laserbeak and Buzzsaw’s keen optics, Soundwave could see some of the closer mecha flinching at the power of Amplitude’s transmission as it cut through their own comm channels. _//Mecha of Iacon!//_

 _//The Senate tells us we are obsolete!//_ Amplitude continued, Skidbreak standing next to him, half-cringing as if he expected to be strafed by plasma fire at any moment. _//All of us, brave warframes and devoted citizens: obsolete, and worthless, no longer able to serve the purposes for which we made! The Towers-mecha, the Senate, even the Prime himself--they tell us that there is not enough fuel. That Cybertron’s supply of energon is finite, and must be conserved, rationed--doled out only to the deserving. That in desperate times, energon can only be given to those mecha who still serve *Tower* functions, mecha whom the *Towers* still need!//_ He paused; the crowd growing, angry and restless. It was obvious to Soundwave, however, that the mecha collecting on the plains were no longer completely sure where to direct their ire. Who was responsible? The now-vanished driller? The two battered figures that shouted their defiance from atop a pile of scrap? The untouchable mecha who lived atop the Towers, who would never themselves experience the grinding weakness of an empty tank?

 _//THEY dictate who is the deserving. The Towers receive energon, and repairs and more, while we, the forgotten and the obsolete--we drink their dregs. We starve, all in the name of preserving Cybertron -- when we, WE ARE CYBERTRON!//_ A low metallic rumble went through the crowd, and the mine-guards began pushing their way forward more quickly--only to find themselves boxed in, more and more mecha only slowly moving out of their way, even under the prod of shocksticks and pointed weapons. And some, the largest--heavily scarred, with topcoats worn away in places, yet still showing the remnants of warbrands--some refused to move at all.

 _//We starve--and they stockpile energon enough to fuel us all beneath our pedes!//_ Amplitude flung images over the open channel, still frames laced with transmission static and the ripples of poor archiving but unmistakable nevertheless, timestamps and data-sourcing clear for all to see. Images obviously gained from Skidbreak’s optics: of the vast cavern and its piled crates, of packing cubes being opened to reveal the warm glow of energon. Of a mech, looking down at the big storage cube held in his battered hands, the fuel glowing pink and clear and full of energon, unmuddied by adulterants--the kind of energon none in the slums had seen for hundreds of vorns. All the images, Soundwave noted, were carefully chosen not to reveal his own presence, or that of his cohort. More images came, thrown like plasma grenades to the ever-growing crowd: of energon, ranks upon ranks of cubes, marked with Senators’ sigils and official stamps, filling a cavern so vast that the rearmost portions of the stockpile couldn’t even be seen. And then, maps of the twisting route -- down through the mines, through the driller-carved tunnel. _//We starve on their scraps. We see ourselves and our neighbors become more like empties every orn. We are deceived, while *they* feast on OUR FUEL!//_

The crowd stilled, some remnant of doubt holding them in place, even as the metallic growl of revving systems rose ever higher, the air so heavy with comm-signals that Soundwave was sure he could have picked them up from the other side of the planet. The sharp optics of Laserbeak and Buzzsaw detected enforcers circling towards the mineguards with weapons at the ready. A few of the little black and whites had found scrap piles of their own, and stood with their small sensor panels spread... amplifying the signals, or recording. Neither flightframe had military training, but even to them, nothing about the enforcer activity looked even remotely like peacekeeping.

_//--it’s a trick--//_

_//-a lie--//_

_//--that’s a Chronicler, haven’t seen one in vorns--//_

_//--those datamecha are slaggin’ creepy, but I ain’t never heard of one handing out false data--//_

_//--talks big, but they’re just trying to save their own plating. No way there could be--//_

The crowd surged, a little forward, a ripple on the sides, brief scuffles breaking out within as neighbor shoved against neighbor. Amplitude turned his visor, just slightly, any comm lost in the background noise. Then, in an apparent fit of inspiration, Skidbreak stepped forward.

“You fraggers don’t know him, but some of you know me. Don’t wanna believe us? Fraggin’ fine. You can slaggin’ believe *this* instead!” With that, he unsubspaced an energon cube, holding it high over his helm in both talons. The clear pink glow was an incandescence, a beacon in the darkness, casting an expanding ripple through the crowd and reflecting in the glow of a thousand avid optics. Then Skidbreak threw the big cube into the gathered mecha.

Gleaming energon splashed over the starving. And the crowd erupted into a riot.

Someone -- impossible to tell who, in the chaos -- opened fire on the mine guards. Screams erupted in the gloom, mecha swarming over one another, scrabbling for any mouthful of fuel. Skidbreak started to flinch back, was forestalled by talons wrapping tight around his arm. _//You’re a hero, Skidbreak,//_ said Amplitude. _//Lead them down!//_

“Whaa--” Skidbreak started, optics spiraled wide. But already Amplitude was broadcasting, flashing the tunnel maps up again and again, interjecting the little loadhauler’s name into every babbling conversation, along with _//-warrior-//_ and _//-ally-//_ and _//-champion-//_.

“I can’t!” Skidbreak protested, even as the carrier turned to slip back down the scrap pile. More shots rang out, and horrible, crashing, splintering sounds. Someone started a chant, quickly taken up as the riot surged forward.

“Skidbreak! Skidbreak!”

 _//Lead them,//_ Amplitude sent, a hard gleam in his optics, cables extending for balance as he staggered, limped away, _//or they’ll crush each other in their fervor.//_ And then the carrier was gone, lost in the flurry as mecha surrounded Skidbreak, heaving him up on solid shoulders.

“Skidbreak! Skidbreak! _Skidbreak!”_

 

\--

 

A klik later, the paths of the two carriers crossed once more. Amplitude had found a long metal pole to use as a support. The thing had once been a specialized bracing strut, running the length of a sniper’s back, shoulder to cross hip; now it was just one piece of scrap among a multitude.

Amplitude’s vocalizer crackled softly as he picked his way towards Soundwave, across a broken field. The crowd roared behind him, so loud that both mechs could feel the vibrations through the scrap underfoot. It took effort for Amplitude to direct a comm channel tightly enough to communicate over the background chaos, even at this close distance. _//That went well,//_ he said, pausing at long last to let his cohort free. Pyrite, Flipsides, and Bainite unfolded themselves quickly, all the turbofox’s jointed legs flashing as he darted in and out of jagged openings in the scrap piles, exploring, while the other two stayed closer to their master.

“Amplitude: has unique definition of ‘well’,” Soundwave replied dryly. The initial euphoria of their survival still lingered, making every bit of sensory input crystalline, intensely clear. Both Laserbeak and Buzzsaw’s victorious glee, as well as Ravage’s satisfaction, were infectious as they filtered across the bond, and Soundwave found himself hard-pressed to maintain his normal equilibrium. “This chaos, your ultimate objective?” If so, Soundwave wasn’t sure he saw the point. Nothing was likely to change. The mecha of the slums would rapidly consume their newfound windfall, a few of the powers behind the secret stockpile might, if they were lucky, be investigated. But no one would ever be brought to answer for Minebreak’s murder. Once the energon was gone, everything would be as it was, with the outcast and the obsolete scrabbling for survival, killing each other for fuel.

Not for the first time, Soundwave thought of leaving Cybertron. Of finding a new place somewhere between the stars where they could thrive. With their newly-acquired energon, it might even be possible. Cybertron’s far-reaching war with the Tr!klcctch had not endeared it to many of their neighbors, which would make such a search difficult. Even so, it was possible that he might find a remote world on which they could survive, perhaps even teach what they knew to other species, other civilizations.

But … it would mean abandoning Cybertron. Abandoning their function: for what good were chroniclers who no longer lived in the world born of Primus and the Allspark? Who turned away from their duty to witness and record, to be Cybertron’s living memory, from the very first age to the last?

No. Leaving was not an option--all it would achieve would be to trade one kind of death for another.

Amplitude slanted the other carrier an unreadable look. _//Not ultimate, no. These mecha have been crushed under the pedes of the mighty for so long, they no longer remember what it’s like to have power. Political power. Perhaps this will remind them -- and all of us.//_

There was more to it than that, Soundwave was certain of it. The flightframes kept their watch for him, helping them steer clear of those whooping groups of mecha who raced to join the riot. The long-hated mine guards had been torn apart, and now scraps of them were being tossed around, like prizes, like icons. The starving mecha were already delving into the tunnels -- they would face more mercenaries below, undoubtedly, but most had nothing left to lose. Soundwave found a rusted iron pathway, relatively clear of scrap, and started along it, doing what he could to reroute damage warnings and disguise his limping progress. Ravage paced alongside, his presence a subtle support for his unsteady carrier.

Amplitude followed. Pyrite looped himself up to his Master’s ankle assembly, and from there wound his way along the seams and ridges of Amplitude’s armor, to lightly encircle his upper arm -- one of the few places the serpentframe could find that remained undamaged. Flipsides walked quietly along behind. _//I thank you for the rescue, as much as I regret the necessity of it. You have a bolthole, a place to recover? I warned the laborer against mentioning us, but the Senate may eventually discover our involvement.//_

Soundwave hesitated, then shook his helm. “Negative. Only accommodations, assigned quarters in the Quandary.” He would need to take steps, make plans in case their enemies learned of their identities. Use their stolen energon to set up supply caches, perhaps. Make arrangements with certain accommodating mecha for escape routes, dispose of the mine inspector ident-badge in such a way it could not be traced back to his cohort .... All of these things, however, would take time. He vented harshly, impatient with his wounds and his own earlier naivete. “Consequences of symbiont rescue, unforeseen,” he admitted.

 _//The assignments, the allotments.//_ Amplitude shook his helm. _//Yet one more way the underclasses are controlled, the obsoletes made to forget their purposes. Maccadam’s is a haven for sympathisers. Detour is a server there. You can give him this code. He can, at least, see you safe. It is the least I can do.//_ Amplitude offered an encrypted key code over a tight band. He moved a little better, once they reached the mainly-deserted marketplace, started the long, slow walk back up to more settled levels. The pair of carriers kept to the less frequently-travelled ways, avoiding the occasional band of High Iacon enforcers rushing to the disruption down below. Most other mecha in the district were wise enough to stay inside.

Flipsides flinched backwards as Bainite found a new cranny to explore and raced by a little too close, the turbofox’s many sharp legs flashing. The little medical specialist shivered, clung even closer to Amplitude’s shadow. _//There’s always a place in the resistance for mecha with your... resourcefulness, Soundwave,//_ said the carrier.

“Resistance.” Soundwave stopped, leaning against a rusted rail. He waited until Amplitude had also stopped, turning back to look at him inquiringly. “Query: objective of this resistance?”

_//Objective? We want to make things right. Mecha shouldn’t have to scrape by on allotments, to starve just because--//_

“Ratbat’s foci, macro- and micro-economics, energon use and efficiency studies. Soundwave: analyzed data thoroughly. Energon shortage, real.”

 _//There *could* be enough, Soundwave. Not for full tanks, but enough to keep us from dying on our bellies as empties. We could explore for more energon, as the council did in ages past. Instead, what fuel we have is wasted in parades and lightshows, in the drones that replace us and in the tanks of bureaucrats. //_ Amplitude shot back. _//You and I -- our functions are performed by AIs and databank archives, and the Towers deem chroniclers unworthy of existing.//_

Soundwave regarded the other carrier for a moment, evaluating him. “Query: your solution, to replace the Senate? The Judge-Consuls? Overthrow the Lord-Protector, the Prime? New leaders, able to guarantee no mecha ever starves?”

Vocalizer crackling, Amplitude shook his helm. _//I don’t...//_

Soundwave took a step forward, releasing his hold on the rail. “Or your aim, reduction of population through civil war?”

Amplitude bristled. _//Turn your ire on the Towers mecha, who forbid the sparking of ‘obsoletes’ and warframes, who tolerate the gladiatorial pits. Slow genocide is murder just the same. We fight for something better.//_

Soundwave took another step forward, ignoring the protective bristling of Bainite and Pyrite, Flipsides’ uncertain retreat further into his master’s shadow. He straightened, and held out a hand. In it, were the tiny, silvery shards of a broken spark-chamber. “Your politics, worth Minebreak’s death?”

Amplitude’s vocalizer crackled, as if he would have cried out, and he steadied himself with his makeshift walking staff. He shuttered his optics for a long, terrible moment, then shuffled the step to Soundwave... and took those small, broken pieces from the Archivist’s hand, cradling them in his own palm. A symbiont’s sparkchamber was shaped very differently from that of most mecha -- it was narrow and sculpted, with very few primary power relays. _//Minebreak.//_ Physical wounds were a small ache, in comparison with this wrenching void, this emptiness where the warmth of a symbiont should have dwelled.

At his feet, Flipsides sat down on the dusty ground, too stunned even to keen.

Amplitude cupped his talons against his own chest. _//I found them... in Kalis. It was just after... after we lost Reset. So I had the space for them. They were the first other Chroniclers we’d seen for half a vorn, Soundwave, and their carrier had been gone for nearly as long. He’d been caught hacking an energon dispensary, had been sentenced to one of the moons for ‘civilian rehabilitation.’//_ Amplitude looked up, his optics too bright. _//We’re all dying, Soundwave. Minebreak was just a little quicker about it.//_

“Perhaps.” Soundwave dropped a hand to Ravage, who shouldered underneath it in silent support. “Soundwave: a Chronicler. Not a Prime. Not a Senator.” He looked up where Laserbeak and Buzzsaw had perched, feeling their uncertainty, their worry at the confrontation between the two carriers. “Cybertron moves on; a carrier’s function remains. Primary responsibility, still the protection of symbionts. Survival of cohort, paramount.” He returned his gaze to Amplitude. Had the other carrier seen what he’d seen--the patterns and fractures spreading about them? “Resistance, possibly necessary. Prime, Lord Protector, no longer united; schism between warframes and civilians only growing. War is coming. But risking symbionts on the front lines of that war, unacceptable.” Especially symbionts such as Minebreak.

Several of his own cohort had known war before, had been embroiled in battle--some symbionts, like Ravage and Bainite, were even uniquely suited to it. That still did not negate the fact that they were not warframes. They were not sparked for battle, designed to both take and inflict damage and still survive. Each symbiont was a piece of Cybertron’s living memory, precious and irreplaceable. With each spark that winked out of existence, another part of that memory was lost. Soundwave had few illusions about their future, or even their survival. His function, however, was still clear; and it did not include throwing his cohort into the jaws of a coming war.

Amplitude’s faceplates were pinched, angry. _//Thank Primus, then, that isn’t a decision you have to make. Yet.//_ He closed his talons carefully over Minebreak’s tiny remains, subspacing the broken, empty sparkcase. _//Come,//_ he sent, looking to Bainite and Flipsides, bringing them to heel as he turned to leave. The little medic walked behind and to Amplitude’s left, while Bainite darted ahead. Pyrite lifted his head, observing with serpentine grace, but said nothing.

Soundwave watched them depart. “Determination, not solely mine to make. Nor yours.”

Amplitude bristled. _//Have you been too long from the company of other Chroniclers? Or perhaps your so-knowledgeable cohort simply has not had time to instruct you. A carrier directs -- the symbiont follows. That is the way.//_

“Affirmative. But a symbiont choosing to leave a carrier, also the way.” In another age, under better circumstances, such a declaration could be seen as an attempt to court away a dissatisfied symbiont. Here and now, however, it was simply a reminder of a carrier’s primary duty, and the only limitation upon that obedience--no carrier could command or force a symbiont to stay. Not if a symbiont decided to sever their bond.

“Your responsibility: to protect, to defend. Your actions, threaten your cohort’s survival.” Soundwave bent his gaze on a bristling Bainite, an inscrutable Pyrite, a quiet Flipsides. “Their loyalty to you, their choice. Honoring it, a carrier’s responsibility.”

 _//The present political situation, Soundwave, affords few of us any choices at all. And unless you can remedy that -- the discussion is academic.//_ Amplitude set the point of his makeshift walking staff. _//Come,//_ he directed again.

This time, Flipsides didn’t move. Amplitude took a few uneven steps before he realized that the little mechkin, the battered red and white symbiont, was not following. _//Now, Flipsides,//_ he repeated, this time turning back. There was a shade of confusion in his glyph, a worried modifier. Flipsides stood uncertainly, optics downcast.

“Our choices, our own,” Soundwave said, looking down at Flipsides’ small frame. “Outcomes, never certain, but choice still remains.” He met Amplitude’s growing anger with equanimity. “Soundwave: chooses to remain a Chronicler, to protect and guide. This cohort, chose to rescue yours. Not for politics. Not for the resistance. Not for energon. Our way out of the dark, still remains our own.” He reached out along the bonds to his cohort, feeling their loyalty, their worry and fierce approval. “Soundwave: will stand for any other symbiont who wishes the same. Other carriers, still exist--other paths, still can be found.”

Leaving a carrier … it was not something ever done lightly. To set aside a bond with one’s carrier, to walk away; just because it was a symbiont’s right did not mean it was easy. Especially now, when there was no guarantee of a new host mech with whom to bond.

Amplitude clenched his talons. _//Before I found them, they’d already been refused by another carrier. No one has the resources now to care for more than their own -- and some don’t even have that. Do not think to imagine --//_

Flipsides’ shoulders were hunched. “Minebreak,” he said, interrupting his carrier, vocaliser soft and unsteady. “Minebreak was refused. I wouldn’t leave him. But I still have skills. I can still do something. But. Just... not that. Not again.” Down in the dark, in the tunnels, the fighting and the running. He looked up, turned his optics finally to each of Soundwave’s symbionts in turn, and then finally to the tall mech himself. “You would really....”

Amplitude made a choked, hissing sound, sharp and harsh through his broken vocalizer. _//Flipsides, no. We require your medical expertise. The entire cohort does. And so does the cause.//_ It was, perhaps, just this side of a command.

“Soundwave: offers sanctuary, energon, until Flipsides chooses new carrier or another path,” Soundwave said in turn. It would stretch their already-meager resources, even with the newly acquired energon, but he would stand by his words. Symbionts required protection, and if Amplitude was unwilling, than it was up to another chronicler to remedy the lack. “Contacts among frameclass, extensive; assistance offered in locating new carrier.”

He pinged a quick query to Ravage and the others--then added, “Courtship, possible; depending on cohort and compatibility.” Five symbionts … most carrier mecha would think twice about docking so many in times like these. Soundwave, however, was not one of them, and Amplitude was correct in this, at least--a symbiont with medical foci could be very valuable to both him and his cohort.

The reply from both flightframes was encouraging, hopeful -- both were sociable, Buzzsaw’s occasional personality clashes aside. Ratbat’s sleepy contact was a little confused, glyphs for _//-huh-//_ and _//-efficiency calculations-//_ and _//-high fuel economy-//_ trailing over one another -- which Soundwave took to be an approving commentary on the efficiency of the mechkin frametype. Flipsides was likely quite similar to Ratbat in his range and depth of knowledge, and the little despot was always pleased at the prospect of having another mech to order about in the name of efficiency. Soundwave would have to keep an optic on him.

Under Soundwave’s hand, Ravage nodded, just once, a subtle dip of his powerful head.

Flipsides looked back at Amplitude, who seemed frozen with shock. The carrier’s field was a morass of spikes, violent and heaving. Then he turned, and walked to Soundwave.

 _//You--!//_ Amplitude started, was drawn up sharply by his injuries. A carrier’s protocols rebelled on an instinctual level against any attempt to sway a bonded symbiont. Carriers could be roused to combat by a lesser insult than this. And Flipsides was no mere newspark, had megavorn of experience and specialized knowledge....

....but Soundwave was more valuable still, if he could be swayed. And Amplitude, as every movement reminded him, was in no condition to fight. The carrier grit his jaws, flinching as he felt the little mechkin begin to unwind the symbiont bonds. It was a terrible sensation, peeling a scar back, laying bare a wound. Bainite whined, darting twice to Flipsides -- who flinched from him -- then back to Amplitude, trying in his own young way to ease his Master’s ache. Pyrite simply watched, optics old and knowing. All carriers endured the transfer of symbionts, occasionally. That, too, was the way.

 _//...I... very well, Flipsides. You can contact me through Detour, at Maccadam’s, when you wish to return.//_ Just turning away was wrenching, when every instinct Amplitude had was demanding he stand his ground. It took all he had to simply leave. _//Soundwave. Let us know when you change your mind.//_

Soundwave watched the other carrier limp away, accompanied now by only two symbionts. “Acknowledged.” Choices--they would all have to continue to make them, if they wished to survive.

He only hoped that, in the end, he would make the right ones.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> \---
> 
>  
> 
> Aaaand that's a wrap. Yay! There's a short coda of tentacle fluff that might go on the end of this, but we'll put that up separately. Thanks for reading, and thank you all for your wonderful encouragement!
> 
> If you're interested, BTW, Flipsides' bio (muhahaha!) is available here: http://transformers.wikia.com/wiki/Flip_Sides

**Author's Note:**

>  **Glossary:** (includes canon and fic-specific terms)  
>  sparkling, hatchling=human equivalent: infant, baby  
> mechling=human equivalent: subadult, can range from toddler to teenager  
> youngling=all-purpose term for any subadult Cybertronian, human equivalent: kid, child
> 
> mechanoton=1.247 tons  
> mechanometer: about 2 meters  
> micron: 1 millionth of a mechanometer  
> filum=1.64 kilometers  
> lightvorn=83 human lightyears
> 
> astrosecond=.273 seconds  
> nanoklik= 1 second  
> klik=1.2 minutes  
> breem=8.3 minutes  
> groon/joor=about 1 hour  
> orn=13 days  
> vorn=83 Earth years
> 
> glitch, slag, frag=insert favorite profanity here
> 
> online=human equivalent: conscious  
> offline=human equivalent: unconscious (also casual slang for dead)  
> deactivated=human equivalent: dead  
> stasis-lock, stasis=human equivalent: coma


End file.
